The paper used in this book complies with the
Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984).
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Every reasonable effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright materials in this book, but in
some instances this has proven impossible. The author(s) [editor(s)] and publisher will be glad to receive
information leading to a more complete acknowledgments in subsequent printings of the book and in the
meantime extend their apologies for any omissions.

Contents
Series Foreword

vii

Preface

xi

Acknowledgments
Chronology
1

Land, People, and History

xiii
xv
1

2 Thought and Religion

29

3 Literature and Art

51

4 Architecture and Housing

83

5 Cuisine and Traditional Dress

127

6 Gender, Courtship, and Marriage

151

7 Festivals and Leisure Activities

173

8 Music, Dance, and Traditional Theater

189

9 Social Customs and Lifestyle: An Epilogue

207

Glossary

215

Bibliography

223

Index

229

Series Foreword
Geographically, Asia encompasses the vast area from Suez, the Bosporus, and
the Ural Mountains eastward to the Bering Sea and from this line southward
to the Indonesian archipelago, an expanse that covers about 30 percent of
our earth. Conventionally, and especially insofar as culture and customs are
concerned, Asia refers primarily to the region east of Iran and south of Russia.
This area can be divided in turn into subregions commonly known as South,
Southeast, and East Asia, which are the main focus of this series.
The United States has vast interests in this region. In the twentieth century
the United States fought three major wars in Asia (namely the Paciﬁc War
of 1941–45, the Korean War of 1950–53, and the Vietnam War of 1965–
75), and each had profound impact on life and politics in America. Today,
America’s major trading partners are in Asia, and in the foreseeable future
the weight of Asia in American life will inevitably increase, for in Asia lie
our great allies as well as our toughest competitors in virtually all arenas of
global interest. Domestically, the role of Asian immigrants is more visible
than at any other time in our history. In spite of these connections with Asia,
however, our knowledge about this crucial region is far from adequate. For
various reasons, Asia remains for most of us a relatively unfamiliar, if not
stereotypical or even mysterious, “Oriental” land.
There are compelling reasons for Americans to obtain some level of concrete
knowledge about Asia. It is one of the world’s richest reservoirs of culture and
an ever-evolving museum of human heritage. Rhoads Murphey, a prominent
Asianist, once pointed out that in the part of Asia east of Afghanistan and
south of Russia alone lies half the world, “half of its people and far more
that half of its historical experience, for these are the oldest living civilized

viii

SERIES FOREWORD

traditions.” Prior to the modern era, with limited interaction and mutual
inﬂuence between the East and the West, Asian civilizations developed largely
independent from the West. In modern times, however, Asia and the West
have come not only into close contact but also into frequent conﬂict: The
result has been one of the most solemn and stirring dramas in world history.
Today, integration and compromise are the trend in coping with cultural
differences. The West—with some notable exceptions—has started to see
Asian traditions not as something to fear but as something to be understood,
appreciated, and even cherished. After all, Asian traditions are an indispensable part of the human legacy, a matter of global “common wealth” that few
of us can afford to ignore.
As a result of Asia’s enormous economic development since World War II,
we can no longer neglect the study of this vibrant region. Japan’s “economic
miracle” of postwar development is no longer unique, but in various degrees
has been matched by the booming economy of many other Asian countries
and regions. The rise of the four “mini dragons” (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong
Kong, and Singapore) suggests that there may be a common Asian pattern of
development. At the same time, each economy in Asia has followed its own
particular trajectory. Clearly, China is the next giant on the scene. Sweeping
changes in China in the last two decades have already dramatically altered
the world’s economic map. Furthermore, growth has also been dramatic
in much of Southeast Asia. Today, war-devastated Vietnam shows great
enthusiasm for joining the “club” of nations engaged in the world economy.
And in South Asia, India, the world’s largest democracy, is rediscovering its
role as a champion of market capitalism. The economic development of Asia
presents a challenge to Americans but also provides them with unprecedented
opportunities. It is largely against this background that more and more people
in the United States, in particular among the younger generation, have started
to pursue careers dealing with Asia.
This series is designed to meet the need for knowledge of Asia among
students and the general public. Each book is written in an accessible and
lively style by an expert (or experts) in the ﬁeld of Asian studies. Each
book focuses on the culture and customs of a country or region. However,
readers should be aware that culture is ﬂuid, not always respecting national
boundaries. While every nation seeks its own path to success and struggles
to maintain its own identity, in the cultural domain mutual inﬂuence and
integration among Asian nations are ubiquitous.
Each volume starts with an introduction to the land and the people of a
nation or region and includes a brief history and an overview of the economy.
This is followed by chapters dealing with a variety of topics that piece
together a cultural panorama, such as thought, religion, ethics, literature and

SERIES FOREWORD

ix

art, architecture and housing, cuisine, traditional dress, gender, courtship
and marriage, festivals and leisure activities, music and dance, and social
customs and lifestyle. In this series, we have chosen not to elaborate on elite
life, ideology, or detailed questions of political structure and struggle, but
instead to explore the world of common people, their sorrow and joy, their
pattern of thinking, and their way of life. It is the culture and the customs of
the majority of the people (rather than just the rich and powerful elite) that
we seek to understand. Without such understanding, it will be difﬂcult for
all of us to live peacefully and fruitfully with each other in this increasingly
interdependent world.
As the world shrinks, modern technologies have made all nations on earth
“virtual” neighbors. The expression “global village” not only reveals the nature
and the scope of the world in which we live but also, more importantly,
highlights the serious need for mutual understanding of all peoples on our
planet. If this series serves to help the reader obtain a better understanding of
the “half of the world” that is Asia, the authors and I will be well rewarded.
Hanchao Lu
Georgia Institute of Technology

Preface
Indonesian cultures include those of forest-dwelling hunters and foragers,
rice growers, ﬁsher folk, village artisans, urban ofﬁce and factory workers,
intellectuals, artists, wealthy industrialists, street vendors, and homeless
people. They involve villagers in customary societies, sophisticated and
cosmopolitan urbanites, as well as people who struggle to survive on city
streets: beggars, peddlers, prostitutes, and pedicab drivers. Moreover, waters
engulﬁng all Indonesian islands support seafaring peoples in contrast to
societies of the lands.
An extraordinary range of belief systems, material culture, and arts enliven
these thousands of islands—composing one of the most ethnographically
rich and diverse countries in the world. Majestic temples, complex poetry
and literature, lavish theatrical performances, rich mythologies, sophisticated
thinking, and splendid visual arts have distinguished Indonesia for centuries
and continue into the present. By the seventh century, people were creating
exquisite gold jewelry, elaborately detailed stone carving, and intricately
beautiful textiles that rival anything in the world today. Indonesians carry on
an artistic genius, constantly reinterpreting and reﬁning their cultures in the
modern world. Yet, aside from Bali’s exotic reputation as an “island paradise,”
many Westerners (and most Americans) are almost unaware of this country
of 242 million people, the fourth most populous nation in the world.
Indonesia has suffered a tumultuous past in stages: under the oppression
of local rulers, European colonists, Japanese invaders, corrupt military
dictatorships, and currently multinational corporations. This history produced
a permanent underclass of people, but also instilled strength of spirit and skill
at survival in most ordinary Indonesians. In this new century, the future of

xii

PREFACE

Indonesia, as of much of the world, remains problematic and uncertain. This
book attempts to give glimpses of some of the marvels, ingenuities, dilemmas,
social realities, diverse cultures and customs, and complex pasts and presents
of the Indonesian people.
Europeans have produced most of the modern written histories of this
region, although Indonesians have contributed much. Most general literature
about Indonesia focuses upon the central islands of Bali and Java. This book
will expand the scope to other islands of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest archipelago,
revealing something of the rich diversity of this nation.

Acknowledgments
I would ďŹ rst like to thank Hanchao Lu for the opportunity to write this book
and for his supportive input while doing so. I appreciate the help and patience
of my editor, Wendi Schnaufer, at Greenwood Press and the enthusiasm and assistance of Kaitlin Ciarmiello. For critical comments while writing, I am grateful
to Wendi Schnaufer, Herbert Phillips, and Pierre Horn. I thank Elizabeth Oley,
David Weitzman, Astri Wright, and Joe and Clare Fischer for helping me sort
out matters concerning photographs. Several people contributed photographs
of places and events that otherwise would not be illustrated in this book. I appreciate the generosity of Marie Jeanne Adams, Ian Fischer-Laycock, Joseph
Fischer, David Weitzman, Andrew Causey, Kathleen Adams, and Elizabeth
Oley for sharing their ďŹ ne pictures. Over the years, I received funding from
generous institutions such as the Fulbright Foundation, the Wenner-Gren
Foundation for Anthropological Research, and the Australian Research Council, which permitted me to carry on prolonged research in Indonesia. I also
thank the Indonesian Academy of Sciences (LIPI) for facilitating my research
periods. The number of Indonesians who assisted and befriended me through
the years is too great to list. Their kindness has been immeasurable. I owe my
truly meaningful knowledge of Indonesia to the people who allowed me into
their lives. I hope that this book will do them justice and I apologize for any
omissions or inaccuracies, which are solely my own. Terima kasih banyak.
Because of the immense scope of this book and the limitations on space
within it, I have had to selectively include information, while leaving much
out. I regret that I could not include more topics and pictures from a number
of places. Thus, this book is a necessarily partial portrayal of Indonesia, but
one that I hope will inspire the reader to further exploration of the culture and
customs of this marvelous country.

First traces of Homo sapiens in Indonesia, as people were able to
migrate back and forth from the Asian mainland. The islands of
western Indonesia formed a peninsula with mainland Southeast
Asia, some call Sundaland. Papua New Guinea and neighboring
islands formed an extension of Australia.

17,000 years
from present

The Ice Age began to subside and sea levels gradually rose to cover
landmasses and form islands of the Indonesian archipelago.

5,000–3,000
b.c.

Austronesian migrations from Southern China began to move
through Indonesia.

100 a.d.

Rulers of the archipelago opened trade routes between China
and India, creating great wealth in some local regions and
permitting foreign inﬂuences. Indians arrived in Sumatra, Java,
and Bali.

Third century

The area of southern Sumatra near Jambi and probably western
Java became main entrepots linking the Java sea region with
China.

Fourth century

First known inscriptions of South Indian Pallawa script used in
announcements by King Mulavarman in East Kalimantan.

Fifth century

Based on Chinese chronicles, Indonesian ships controlled most
trade in the archipelago and were sailing as far as China.

xvi

CHRONOLOGY

Eighth century

Srivijaya emerged in Sumatra as the ﬁrst great power in the
region. Inscriptions reveal teaching of Tantric Mahayana
Buddhism. Srivijaya controlled trade in the Melaka Straits
through providing a safe upriver port base at Palembang.
Sailendra dynasty developed a great rice plane polity in Central
Java. They ruled for 200 years, constructing the giant Buddhist
monument Borobudur.

Tenth century

Most Javanese rulers, for reasons unclear (but perhaps through
wars with Srivijaya of Sumatra) lost power. Airlangga became
the founder of Java’s ﬁrst great empire, bringing central and eastern Java and Bali under some semblance of a united kingdom.

Thirteenth
century

Kertanegara began a reign of rapid development in Javanese
culture and expansion beyond Java. After his death, his son-inlaw founded the most powerful kingdom ever to arise in Java:
Majapahit.

Majapahit’s ﬂeets sailed to outer islands, in an expansive plan
by its prime minister Gajah Mada. A chronicle written at this
time, The Nagarakertagama, claimed that the empire held
sovereignty from Sumatra to Papua New Guinea. Srivijaya had
declined after losing control of maritime commerce to Chinese
shipping.

Fifteenth
century

Majapahit went into decline after losing control of island
shipping trade and the opposition of the expanding Muslim
kingdom of Demak.

Sixteenth
century

The Islamic Mataram kingdom rose to power, subjugating most
of Java and invading the formerly Hindu–Buddhist interior.

1511

Portuguese conquered the city of Melaka, thus controlling the
Straits. Months later they sailed to eastern Indonesia seeking
spices.

Seventeenth
century

The seafaring Makasar from South Sulawesi reached northern
Australia, on coastal Arnhem Land, in search of trepang (sea
cucumbers) to sell to Chinese. They interacted with Aboriginal
people, leaving Makasar descendants and terminology.

1641

The Dutch took Melaka from the Portuguese and began to
establish factories and plantations in Sumatra and Java. Jan
Pieterszoon Coen, Governor General of the Dutch East Indies,
took control of the spice trade in the Banda Islands and other
parts of eastern Maluku.

CHRONOLOGY

xvii

1664

Atrocities in the Indies and ongoing trade battles with the Dutch
led to an unexpected invasion of Manhattan (then a Dutch
colony) by a British armada. This resulted in Holland’s forced
swap of Manhattan Island to the English in exchange for the
small Banda island of Run—a major turn in American history.

1799

The Dutch East India Company began to lose money. The
Netherlands government took over its enterprise in the future
Indonesia.

1811

Java fell under control of the British East India Company.
Thomas Stamford Rafﬂes, as lieutenant governor, rediscovered
Borobudur, buried under centuries of volcanic soil. He arranged
for excavation.

A period called the “Java Wars” raged against the Dutch. The
Netherlands also faced resistance in western Sumatra from
Islamic leaders of the Minangkabau.

1830

A great commercial expansion of Dutch colonialism under “The
Cultivation System” demanded a percentage of crops from all
farmers. This period secured position and wealth for the elite
priyayi Javanese in complicity with Dutch colonists.

1860

Publication of the novel Max Havelaar, written by a former
Dutch ofﬁcial, Douwes Dekker (under the pen name Multatuli)
describing the abuses of combined Dutch and Javanese elite rule
toward peasants.

1883

The volcano Krakatoa erupted in the sea west of Java.

1901

The Dutch created a more liberal Ethical Policy, in response to
criticism within Holland and other European nations. At this
point, the Netherlands controlled most of Indonesia.

1906

On September 20 the Dutch advanced upon Denpasar, Bali.
The entire royal family and entourage marched toward them,
carrying only daggers. All were shot or committed suicide. This
day is remembered as Puputan (Ending).

1907–1911

Borobudur excavation and restoration was completed under
Dutch administration.

1911

Publication of Raden Kartini’s letters as a book in Holland. In
1920, it was published in English as Letters of a Javanese Princess,
telling of a young Javanese woman’s struggles with traditional
values and European modern ideas.

xviii

CHRONOLOGY

1900–1930

Indonesian nationalism began to spread among a variety of
organized groups, from Muslims to Communists. Many became
organized under the Indonesian Nationalist Party, formed by
future President Sukarno.

1941–1942
1945

World War II broke out and the Japanese conquered Indonesia.
After news of Japanese surrender, Sukarno proclaimed Indonesia
an Independent nation on August 17, 1945.
Holland had attempted to regain control of Indonesia, but
ceded it under international pressure, retaining only West
Papua. Indonesia gained full sovereignty in 1949. Sukarno and
Muhammad Hatta became the ﬁrst president and vice-president,
respectively, and developed a policy called Guided Democracy.
Mt. Gunung Agung erupted in Bali killing more than 1,000
people.
An attempted coup occurred on September 30, leaving six military
generals and one child murdered. General Suharto, senior surviving ofﬁcer, seized command, becoming the new leader of Indonesia. The full reality behind this coup remains a mystery.

1949

1963
1965

1965–1967

Rumors circulated widely after the failed coups that a communist women’s group had also mutilated the murdered generals.
A violent frenzy swept Indonesia as the army and citizens killed
communists and others. In Bali up to 80,000 were murdered.
Tens of thousands died in North Sumatra and Java. The total
number of deaths over these years is estimated at more than a
half million people.

1966

In March Sukarno ofﬁcially handed the Presidency over to
Suharto, and then went into exile. Suharto rapidly centralized
power in a tight system of military control. Under his absolute
authority, New Order Indonesia began.

1967

Indonesia joined the United Nations. A new Indonesian foreign
investment law began a wave of international capital in the country.
Oil exports brought much revenue into Indonesia, and a program
of economic development began. Achievements were phenomenal,
involving infrastructure, industry, healthcare, and schools.
The Dutch ceded its last outpost, West Papua New Guinea to
Indonesia. The region was then renamed Irian Jaya (Victorious
Papua).
Indonesian forces invaded East Timor, recently independent
from Portugal, with acquiescence (if not prompting) of the
United States and Australia. A battle ensued lasting almost 25
years, as people resisted occupation and Indonesian forces killed
many thousands of East Timorese.

1969

1975

CHRONOLOGY

xix

1980

A book of political dissident, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, This
Earth of Mankind, was published in Indonesian in Jakarta.
Three more novels followed, written while Toer was in a prison
camp on the island of Buru, called the Buru Quartet. Suharto
banned the books in Indonesia.

1980s–1997

The New Order under Suharto retained power and political
repression and corruption progressed. Simultaneously, economic
growth continued, producing a growing Indonesian middle class.

1997

The Asian ﬁnancial crisis hit after the dramatic fall of the Thai
baht. Currencies of Southeast Asia plummeted. The Indonesian
rupiah lost 80 percent of its former value. Suharto failed to
comply with reforms demanded by International Monetary
fund and continued “crony capitalism.” This caused further
economic woes and massive public disgust with Suharto.

1998

Suharto was re-elected unopposed to his seventh presidential
term. Security forces shot four protesting university students in
Jakarta, and the “May Riots” swept the city. Rioters attacked
mostly government and commercial buildings as the city
ignited in ﬂames. Thugs targeted the Chinese community, looting, raping, killing, and burning their homes and businesses.
Three thousand buildings were razed. On May 21, having lost
support of the military, Suharto passed the Presidency to his
Vice-President, B. J. Habibie.

1998–1999

Violence raged across Indonesia: Kalimantan Dayaks
murdered transmigrants from Madura; religious war between
Christians and Muslims created death and devastation in
Ambon; gangs controlled streets of provincial cities; and
a war between clans left many dead in Sumba. Much of
Indonesia was in anarchy.

1999

In January President Habibie announced publicly that East
Timor could vote for autonomy or independence. This fueled
a wave of separatist movements across Indonesia and upset the
military. Losing a vote of conﬁdence in parliament, Habibie
resigned from upcoming elections. In national elections,
after much delay, debate, and confusion, on October 19
Abdurrachman Wahid became fourth Indonesian President
and Sukarno’s daughter, Megawati Sukarnoputri became VicePresident. Under the auspices of the occupying United Nations,
East Timor voted overwhelmingly for national independence
on August 30. Upon exiting the new nation, the Indonesian
army and pro-Indonesian Timorese incinerated much of the
region and forcibly evacuated thousands across the border to
Indonesian West Timor.

xx

CHRONOLOGY

2001

Following his liberal policies, openness to autonomy of
various regional groups, and his poor health, President Wahid
was impeached through military efforts in July. Megawati
Sukarnoputri became President of Indonesia.

2002

On October 12 a terrorist car bomb exploded at a Bali
nightclub, killing over 200 and destroying a city block. The
group responsible claimed that they meant to kill Americans in
retaliation for George W. Bush’s Middle Eastern policies. Other
attacks would follow in Jakarta and then again in Bali. Islamic
Fundamentalism was growing in Indonesia through groups like
Jemaah Islamiyah (Islamic Congress).
Megawati ruled as a detached elite, and Indonesia deteriorated.
Conﬂicts and anarchy raged across the archipelago. The military
became involved in organized crime rackets, and people became
ever more disillusioned.

2003

Discovery of small human-like fossils on the island of Flores,
named Homo ﬂoresiensis.

2004

Indonesians elected a new President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono
(“S.B.Y”) a retired general offering hope of strength, reform, and
much needed order. His Vice-President was Jusuf Kalla. S.B.Y.
won the ﬁrst direct election in Indonesian history, as people
voted for individuals and not parties.
On December 26, a massive tsunami devastated the region of
Aceh on the north coast of Sumatra, killing thousands.

2005

Indonesian military forces withdrew from Aceh, after 31 years.
Acehnese agreed to surrender weapons and drop demands for
independence. The national government ceded to Aceh much
of its natural gas and oil resources and agreed to limited selfgovernment for the region. A staunchly Islamic region, Aceh
voted sharia (conservative Islamic) law into its government.
A free press continued and some government reforms were
slowly progressing. The Constitutional Court and Judicial
Commission began to ﬂex some power independent of politics
and cronyism.

2006

On March 8 women’s groups took to the streets in Jakarta to
protest sharia (conservative Islamic) law, as a “porn bill” before
the House of Representatives would apply strict Muslim dress
codes and conduct to them, but not to men. They demanded
that the government focus on more valid issues, like domestic
violence and human trafﬁcking.

CHRONOLOGY

xxi

On April 12, 5,000 trade union workers swarmed Jakarta and
Surabaya, Java, protesting the governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s support of business
interests over their own.
On April 30, writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer died in Jakarta at
the age of 82.
2006

From April through July, Mt. Merapi in Central Java issued
signs of an imminent eruption, spewing lava and clouds of gas.
On May 27, a 6.2 earthquake struck near the city of Yogyakarta,
Java, killing more than 6,200 and leaving much of the region
in ruins.
On July 17, a major tsunami devastated the southwest coast
of Java, following a 6.8 earthquake. More than 50,000 people
became homeless and as many as 1,000 perished.

1
Land, People, and History
LAND AND CLIMATE
On December 26, 2004, a massive earthquake jolted the shores of northwest
Sumatra, Indonesia. Within hours immense tsunami waves virtually obliterated the area of Banda Aceh, killing thousands. The quake’s ripple effect sent
tsunamis as far as Africa, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, wreaking devastation in the
southeastern hemisphere—particularly ravaging coastal populations in nine
countries of Southeast and South Asia. Resulting tremors followed in places
as distant as Alaska. The tectonic shift centered in the sea near the Sumatran
coast and the destruction in Banda Aceh and well beyond dominated the global
media. Many in the western hemisphere viewed the ﬁrst televised images they
had ever seen of Indonesian people, from a region they knew little about.
The region of Banda Aceh, Sumatra, long had been a landing point for
less catastrophic but nonetheless profound inﬂuences—such as the spread of
trade from India and Arabia and probably the introduction of Islam to the
Indonesian and Malay archipelagos. Marco Polo traveled to Aceh in 1292
and reported the ﬁrst Islamic sultanate in Southeast Asia.1 In more recent
times, Aceh has experienced intense political strife and violence in a struggle
for independence from Indonesia. But this is one region of many this book
will explore, and there is much to cover.
A Volcanic Archipelago

Imagine a country made up of more than 17,000 islands—over 6,000 inhabited,
roughly over 300 languages, and hundreds of ethnic groups stretching on either

2

CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA

side of the equator for nearly 3,200 miles. Traveling by air across the length of
the world’s largest archipelago, scores of volcanoes appear through the clouds,
some with colorful crater lakes. Intricate ecologies of uniquely formed islands
and waterways have shaped the vibrant cultures inhabiting them.
This vast stretch of wildly diverse islands formed through tumultuous
geological events over thousands of years. A slow, perpetual movement of
continental plates from the Indian and Paciﬁc Oceans shaped the archipelago,
causing some land masses to rise and others to sink into surrounding seas.
Indeed, the earthquake and tsunamis of December of 2004 followed an
abrupt tectonic shift deep in the ocean bed west of Sumatra.
An enormous series of arcs creates the southern Indonesian islands; a concentric sweep beginning northwest of Sumatra and stretching thousands of
miles eastward through the Maluku islands (formerly called the Moluccas) to
West Papua (Irian Jaya), continuing far beyond Indonesia across the Paciﬁc
Ocean.
Before the end of the last Ice Age (about 17,000 years ago), shallow straits
connected much of the archipelago. As late as 10,000 b.c., people and animals
migrated from mainland Southeast Asia on foot to the Indonesian islands. Known
by geographers as the Sunda Shelf, approximately 15,000 years ago Sumatra,
Java, Bali, and Borneo (Kalimantan) were one land mass connected to the Asian
mainland, with shallow waters from the Gulf of Siam to the Java Sea.
Mountains, forests, rivers, and savannahs dramatically contour these everchanging lands, altered by volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, erosion, and
sedimentation. Explosive volcanoes produced or annihilated islands in the
past and continue to transform them. Among hundreds of volcanoes across
Indonesia, sixty-one remain active. Krakatoa, the most historically famous,
exploded in 1883 in the seas west of Java, killing more than 35,000 people
and changing climate patterns around the world for a year.2 A yet greater
eruption (the second largest ever recorded in the world) took place on the
island of Sumbawa on Tambora mountain in 1815, killing approximately
50,000 people, obliterating the Tambora language group, and causing a
worldwide “year without summer.”3 Lake Toba in North Sumatra appeared
after an ancient volcano literally blew its top about 74,000 years ago—the
largest known eruption ever.
Other explosions, such as of Mount Gunung Agung in Bali in 1963,
destroyed villages and terrain, simultaneously strengthening people’s beliefs
in the supernatural. Indeed, to many Indonesians volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, droughts, wildﬁres, famines, and ﬂoods signal immanent changes
in human and metaphysical powers that be. Natural disasters often portent
the fall of a national or local regime. Such catastrophes preceded the fall of
ancient kings in Sumatra, Java, and Bali as well as the more recent demises

LAND, PEOPLE, AND HISTORY

3

of President Sukarno in 1965 and President Suharto in 1998. Thus, geology
(and all of nature) reinforces belief systems of Indonesian societies.
Volcanoes also provide the rich soils nourishing communities clustered at
their feet. Volcanic ash reinforces a fertility that would otherwise wash away
in the nearly two hundred inches of rainfall drenching Indonesia each year.
Most islands remain verdant from frequent rainfall, supporting rain forests
or intensive agriculture. Southeast islands such as Flores, Sumba, Savu, Rote,
Alor, and Timor lay dry and relatively barren of vegetation for half the year
or more, sitting within climate zones of Australia.
The Wallace Line, Upland and Lowland, Coastal and Aquatic

In the mid-nineteenth century British explorer and naturalist Alfred Russel
Wallace perceived a distinction between two zones of the Indonesian archipelago.4 He then proposed a bio-regional border, now accepted internationally as
the Wallace Line. Wallace observed sharp contrasts in ﬂora and fauna across an
aquatic border running north to south between Bali and Lombok and separating Kalimantan and Sulawesi. To the west of this line, animals and plants compared to those of Asia, including monkeys and tigers living amid jungle trees. To
the east, natural species resembled those of Australia, including Eucalyptus
trees, marsupials, and emus. Climate east of the border was notably drier than
islands to the west.
A largely monsoonal and volcanic region, Indonesia contains about 10
percent of the world’s (ever-shrinking) rain forests. Historically based upon
agricultural production, groups in Indonesia have practiced wet-rice cultivation in fertile lowland ﬂoodplains and swidden (slash-and-burn) agriculture,
hunting, and foraging in the less fertile upland regions. Populations and
political centers tended to cluster in lowland or coastal areas for rich soils and
commerce. People maximized many different ecological conditions, creating complementary needs and interests between groups. Thus, necessities of
reciprocal trade and services between highland peoples with those of coastal
regions, and between swidden and wet-rice agriculturalists, established interdependant economies. For example, inland peoples might trade wood products, crafts, or garden produce for ﬁsh, salt, and imported goods from port
communities.
Indonesia is a hot, equatorial land, becoming chilly at high altitudes. Snow
falls only in West Papua around the mountain Puncak Jaya (16,503 ft.), which
contains permanent glaciers. Two seasons envelop the remaining islands, the
relatively cool rainy season between November and April, when monsoons
ride the winds from the South China Sea. For the rest of the year, a hotter, drier season engulfs the archipelago. Annual temperatures typically range

4

CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA

from 61 to 91 degrees Fahrenheit with humidity from 50 to 90 percent.
Dense atmospheric moisture saturates days with sultry heat. Indonesians customarily take a mid-day break from activities, much like the Spanish siesta.
At the hottest time of day (between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.), people return from
the ﬁelds, businesses close, and many sleep.
Water deﬁnes Indonesia as much as does land—to the extent that
Indonesians refer to their nation as tanah air, meaning “land and water.”
In a vast region of long maritime commerce and sustenance, oceans deﬁne
the archipelago as essentially as land in terms of human environments and
resources. The ubiquitous Indonesian seas abound in life supporting ﬁshing
communities. In fact, some ﬁsherfolk, such as those from the Sulu Islands
between the Philippines and Sulawesi, live on boats all year. Floating communities of people animate the waters of some regions, regarding the sea as
home and the land as a place for trade, not settlement.
People Utilizing Land

Human impacts upon the land, such as wet-rice and swidden (slashand-burn) agriculture, reconﬁgured regions of Indonesia drastically. Wetrice agriculture versus swidden methods form a classic distinction between
geographical regions for scholars—contrasting the “Inner Indonesia” of Bali
and Java and the “Outer Indonesia” of all other islands.
People in heavily forested regions such as Kalimantan or West Irian practice
a slash-and-burn type of agriculture called ladang. These clearings cut from
forests support crops for two to three years, until exhausting soil nutrients.
Then people clear a new ladang. When farmed on a small scale, slash-andburn regions recover their original growth to a good degree. This type of
cultivation does not permit the population density of wet-rice agricultural
communities. Swidden settlements require about ten times the land that they
actually cultivate in a year. As people must walk long distances to their ﬁelds,
villages normally number a few hundred people, often living at some distance
from each other. Historically, these were fairly egalitarian societies, with no
place for kings. Swidden agriculturalists practiced animism, centering on
their plants, water, and ancestors.5 They based beliefs in complex perceptions
of natural and supernatural realms.
Bali presents a marvel of cultivation through an intricate environment of
rice terraces, as water systems intrinsically sculpt much of the island.6 Moreover, the elaborate irrigation systems required for wet-rice agriculture (called
sawah) are only possible through organized communities built upon social
cooperation. In Bali, subaks form such communal systems involving people
in associations for all aspects of maintaining extensively irrigated rice paddies.

LAND, PEOPLE, AND HISTORY

5

People adhere to the subak system not only for reasons of survival and social
cooperation, but also following religious beliefs deﬁning the correct and
moral way of doing things in life. The religion of Bali is Hinduism, but like
belief systems throughout Indonesia, it incorporates many ancient animist
elements. Thus, geography, survival, activities, and beliefs mix in cultural and
metaphysical ideas throughout Indonesia.
PEOPLE
Societies in Indonesia reﬂect the natural diversity and splendor of the
routes, moorings, and interiors among thousands of sea-bounded land masses
forming this archipelago. Although interconnected historically through politics, trade, wars, colonialism, and the formation of the Republic of Indonesia,
each island remains distinctive. Moreover, remarkable social, religious, or
geographical differences emerge within islands as large as Sumatra or as small
as Savu.
With such variety, Indonesia deﬁes simple categorizations. For example,
eastern Indonesian islands could as logically fall under categories of Western
Polynesia as of those of Southeast Asia, in terms of location, land, climate, and
headhunting and chieftain cultures. Western Indonesia experienced more
historical connections with mainland Southeast Asia, shares similar climate
and geographical features, and developed reﬁned court cultures incorporating
Indian inﬂuences.
Cultures of Indonesia vividly reﬂect adaptations to land, climate, and
seas; the variety of languages and societies across the archipelago developed
through an insularity of islands (some far more than others) as well as the
many inﬂuxes of peoples and inﬂuences upon them. Communities in some
regions lived in relative isolation while others were part of great trading or
seafaring networks. Outside inﬂuences constantly arrived throughout the past
and while most evident in multi-ethnic port communities, they eventually
made their ways to the hinterlands through trade. Aside from some inland
mountain tribes, such as the Dani in West Papua (Irian Jaya), few people in
Indonesia have lived in complete isolation for long periods of time.
The oldest known human histories in Indonesia surfaced through
archaeological discoveries in Java. Human fossils termed Homo erectus (“Java
Man”) from Java date back to approximately 1.3 to 1.7 million years.7 Recent ﬁndings in 2004 in a cave on the island of Flores revealed fossil remains
of a small statured being (less than four feet tall). This newly-found human
was named Homo ﬂoresiensis, dated as living 18,000 years ago (other similar
remains were then found dating to 13,000 years). Discoverers of this fossil
nicknamed it “The Hobbit” because of its small size. Myths in Flores carry

6

CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA

on to this day about a separate race of “little people,” which makes this human
fossil all the more compelling for anthropologists.8 At this writing, Homo ﬂoresiensis holds the status of an individual species amid continuing controversy.
One scholar considers that the ﬁrst Indonesian humans were of the broad
ethnic group we now call Australo-Melanesians and that they were the ancestors of the Melanesians of New Guinea, the Australian Aborigines, and the
small Negrito communities of the Malay Peninsula and the Philippines.9
Archaeological speculation suggests that due to the ancient exposure of
the Sunda Shelf (between the Malay peninsula and the western Indonesian
archipelago), many different peoples migrated and intermixed in prehistoric
times.10 This explanation also traces the Indonesian islands and beyond linguistically, with the beginning of the migration of peoples of the Austonesian
language group from Taiwan about 5,000 years ago—expanding as numerous divisions migrated to various island regions. Some words derived from
the Austronesian language remain similar from Indonesia to Hawaii. The
Austronesians ventured as far as Madagascar, off the east coast of Africa and
to Easter Island in the eastern Paciﬁc. They dramatically distinguished a huge
sweep of islands between Africa and the eastern Paciﬁc as a megalithic arch.
Places Austronesians settled typically display large stone monuments. The
immense heads of Easter Island are the most famous examples.
Because ancient people across the Indonesian islands largely used tools
and built structures made from decomposable materials like bamboo, rattan,
wood, palm leaves, coconut shells, and grasses, little remains of their daily
lives for archaeological ﬁnding. In this wet, hot climate, organic matter rots
quickly, leaving few traces. Generally stone constructions like temples and
graves, and tools and artifacts of metal or stone remain of the past.
People living in the western region of Indonesia—including the islands
of Sumatra, Java and Bali—generally resemble those of the Malay peninsula
(now part of the nation of Malaysia), with straight black hair, round eyes, and
dark complexions. Toward the eastern areas of the Lesser Sunda Islands (Nusa
Tenggara Timur) and the Maluku archipelago, Papuan or Melanesian features
characterize populations. Tightly curled hair and darker skin tones distinguish
people of islands such as Flores, Timor, Ambon, or Papua. Before the last Ice
Age, the island now politically divided into Papua New Guinea and Irian Jaya
(West Papua) was connected by land to Australia. Indigenous peoples of the
Papuan island physically resemble Aboriginal peoples of Australia.
Throughout a vast region, however, all sorts of people have mixed over
many centuries; and on almost any sizeable island, might descend from ancestry
including Chinese, Indians, Arabs, Persians, Europeans, Africans, or islanders
across Southeast Asia and beyond. Portuguese brought Africans into their
colonies in Flores and East Timor. In East Timor today, some claim descent

LAND, PEOPLE, AND HISTORY

7

from Mozambique and Angola. Intermixing between all groups occurred to
the extent that there certainly is no one Indonesia physical “type,” and likely
there never was.
Languages

Linguists have distinguished two major language groups in Indonesia:
Papuan and Austronesian. In modern Indonesia it is possible to identify more
than 200 Austronesian and more than 150 Papuan (Melanesian) languages.11
Papuan languages persist in eastern regions of the archipelago, including one
group in East Timor, and stretch through some islands in Maluku and much
of inland West Papua. Austronesian also weaves through these regions and
delineating borders for language groups is difﬁcult. Austronesian language
bases predominate through the archipelago west of Timor Island.
Since the seventeenth century, languages in many areas have become extinct.
This followed situations such as the Dutch capture of the Banda Islands in
1621, their extermination of most of the indigenous people, and thus the extinction of their language.12 The massive eruption of Mt. Tambora, Sumbawa
in 1815 obliterated people of the Tambora language group. Other languages
disappeared as people migrated or mixed with others coming to their regions.
Since Indonesian independence in 1949, many formerly remote communities
have attended school, learned the national language of Bahasa Indonesia, and
have absorbed wider inﬂuences. Now, only thirteen Indonesian languages have
a million or more native speakers; linguists generally believe that languages
with fewer than this number are vulnerable to extinction.13
The Malay language originated in Sumatra and spread through mercantile
centers of the Straits of Melaka, becoming the main trade vernacular of
coastal regions beyond. Javanese was a complex language, steeped in social
class distinctions and too difﬁcult for traders to learn and use. Thus, Malay
spread through Java’s ports. In the colonial era, the Dutch insisted upon using
Malay as their language of law and administration. A publishing industry
beginning in the 1920s further established Malay as a language of legitimacy.
In 1928, the nationalist movement adopted Malay as the language of the
future independent state of Indonesia, calling it Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian
Language).14
Ways of Life

The Chinese traded with Indonesia long before Europeans knew it existed
and some settled early on. Chinese became established traders and middlemen
in port towns, growing in numbers after Europeans arrived in the sixteenth

8

CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA

century. A solid merchant class thus evolved adept at business management
and the accumulation of wealth. Many Chinese became some of the most
well-to-do business people in modern Indonesia, supported by the national
regime in return for political patronage. This caused resentment among common Indonesians, who typically did not practice the Chinese business acumen
and work ethic. Chinese came to dominate commerce and set up shops and
enterprises on the outermost islands.
Today roughly 50 percent of Indonesians occupy the densely populated
island of Java. The capital city of Jakarta contains about 10 million people and
Surabaya (the second largest) numbers almost 6 million. Less than half of the
nation’s population now lives in rural areas. Rural people support themselves
through wet-rice cultivation in Bali and Java. Through a program called transmigrasi (transmigration), the Indonesian government (during the 1970s and 1980s)
transposed this agricultural system along with Javanese farmers to other islands.
This policy aimed to relieve population pressures in Java and to “Indonesianize”
other island peoples by converting them to wet-rice farming. Javanese rulers have
long equated wet-rice agriculture with being civilized. Transmigration was not
without problems, as Javanese tried to adapt to extremely different environments
and cultures. Further, they often faced resentment (for the land the government
allotted them) from indigenous peoples of the islands where they resettled.
Enclaves of wet rice paddies grow in Sumatra, coastal areas of Kalimantan,
the Makasar and Manado regions of Sulawesi, and lowlands of the Lesser
Sunda and Maluku islands. In places with low rainfall such as Sumba and
Timor, people grow rice and produce along rivers and invest much of their
energy into livestock. The small, dry island of Savu cultivates the lontar palm
for most of its needs, providing sugar, paper, oil, building materials, and trade
goods. As mentioned, people in deeply forested regions such as Kalimantan
and West Irian carry on slash-and-burn agriculture. Multi-national corporations leasing large regions from the Indonesian government, however, have
displaced many such people from forests to allow massive logging and mining
operations. These businesses have pushed indigenous peoples off of their lands
and devastated environments.
HISTORY
The Archipelago before European Contact

Indonesia’s aquatic passages carried traders from India, Arabia, Persia,
China, and mainland Southeast Asia in prehistoric time, later followed by
Europeans. The generally warm waters and rarity of storms in Indonesian seas
provided an hospitable, inviting meeting place in comparison to seas such as

LAND, PEOPLE, AND HISTORY

9

the Mediterranean,15 offering a favorable maritime environment. Boat building and navigation reached sophisticated levels on islands such as Sulawesi,
Bali, Java, and Sumatra, permitting people to travel widely, trade between
islands and mainland Asia, and migrate to other regions. The ﬁrst European
boats arrived following a demand for Indonesian spices, especially nutmeg and
cloves—stimulating trade relations with the eastern islands of Maluku (the
famed “Spice Islands”) beginning in the sixteenth century. The seas became
avenues for widespread penetration of European ships with advanced naval
technology. This enabled conquest of people throughout the archipelago, followed by colonialism.
By way of ocean routes, India had established trade with Java from about
the ﬁrst century a.d. and the outermost Indonesian islands received goods from
China and India many centuries ago. Because of the rhythms of the monsoons
in island Southeast Asia, traders moving between India and China generally
needed to spend a season in port somewhere near the Straits of Melaka to
wait for the winds favorable for an onward journey.16 Effects from these countries were manifold through the islands, principally from India. Yet the waters
allowing Chinese and Indian trade also hindered the massive invasions these
powers carried out on mainland Southeast Asia. Thus, many islands absorbed
inﬂuences of world civilizations—trade goods, ideas, new foods, technology,
religion, material culture, agricultural innovations, and domestic animals—
gradually over centuries. People adapted such elements to their societies and
purposes.
An historical account of Indonesia characterizes indigenous ways of accounting
history, in describing early Sumatran kingdoms:
Afﬁrming a particular version of the past was never an urgent priority in a culture with
relatively diffuse awareness of authority, where the sea offered countless options for
people who were at home in boats and where agriculturalists were dispersed in many
small riverine enclaves.17

In fact, there are few written early accounts of history from the Indonesian
region, although some do exist, especially from Bali, Java, and Sulawesi.
Chinese court visitors to the islands and eventually Europeans such as Marco
Polo provided descriptive writings of life in the archipelago many centuries
ago. Particularly in Sumatra and Java, much international trade and political activity took place in thriving societies, drawing in foreigners with their
developed Hindu–Buddhist centers.
Through the Indonesian islands and Southeast Asia, political power has
functioned through what scholars call a center and periphery model.18 That
is, rulers exerted inﬂuence from the center of an area surrounded by followers
extending out to a periphery. Imagine a circle with a powerful light at the

10

CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA

center. The intensity of this light gradually becomes diffused toward the
edges of the circle. Beyond the circle would be the dimmed outer boundaries
of another region of people allied to a ruler at the center of their political area.
This model typiﬁed large kingdoms and small village regions.
An important ancient mark of political power throughout Southeast Asia
rests in the ability of leaders to attract large followings of people. One analysis
concludes, “What Euro-Americans commonly regard as ‘real’ power (inﬂuence over other persons) would only be possible to one already favored by
invisible forces. The real question was how long those forces would continue
to confer their favor.”19 Such views toward power or its deterioration profoundly affected recent elections in Indonesia and changing political conditions. To comprehend modern Indonesian politics, one must acknowledge
deeply historical ideas of the meanings and workings of power through the
potency of leaders.
Throughout history, controlling populations was far more important than
owning land. Subjects would serve a ruler in exchange for protection, gifts,
prestige, or simply peace. If he ruled too harshly or failed to care for his surrounding population, many would simply move to a more favorable region.
Thus followings were ﬂexible and populations could suddenly shift.
The Rise of the Great Hindu-Buddhist Kingdoms

During the last half of the seventh century, the region around the city
of Palembang in southeastern Sumatra became the center of the Srivijaya
Empire. Palembang at that time controlled trade and shipping through the
Straits of Melaka—a vital commercial route for many Asian powers and later
Europeans. This maritime control produced immense wealth for the Srivijaya
Empire, who sent ships to China and Sri Lanka. Although information of
Srivijayan history is scant, it dominated the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, and
western Java for much of ﬁve hundred years. After centuries of power, Srivijaya
went into decline following the expansion of Chinese shipping through the
archipelago, involving Malay, Thai, and Javanese ports and dispersing control of the Palembang kingdom.20
During an architecturally ﬂamboyant period (eighth and ninth centuries) in central Java, the immense Buddhist temple Borobudur arose under
the Sailendra dynasty. The region grew clustered with numerous temples,
including Hindu structures in the mountain-bordered Dieng Plateau and
a large Hindu complex at Prambanan. These monuments represented rice
plain societies, with different political dynamics than those of the cosmopolitan ports. These inland societies involved speciﬁc types of eco-regions,
with leaders controlling the water associations essential to maintain wet-rice

LAND, PEOPLE, AND HISTORY

11

agriculture. One historian wrote that “the behavior of the gods, like the
behavior of the farmers, was shaped by the human planting cycles, for they
came down to inhabit their shrines only on special days, usually related to the
planting schedule.”21 This remains the case throughout Indonesia, whether
involving rice paddies in Java or Bali or cornﬁelds in Timor. People appeal
to supernatural forces to provide land with water and ensure fertility of their
crops. In this way, ongoing relations between people, gods and goddesses,
ancestors, spirits, and agriculture are vital to Indonesian societies.
The great Javanese empire of Majapahit rose as a rice plain polity. Coming
to power in the late thirteenth century, Majapahit gained political authority
over central Java and the island of Madura. This empire sent emissaries afar
between 1294 and 1478 and considered itself sovereign over what centuries
later became islands of the Republic of Indonesia. Kertanegara, who ruled in
the late thirteenth century, had visions of a large archipelago domain ruled
by the Javanese, which he expressed in the term nusantara (archipelago).
Today, Indonesians refer to their nation by this term. An epic poem, the
Nagarakertagama (1365), tells of the grandeur of the Majapahit Empire and
is a rare indigenous record of this period of Javanese history.
Majapahit reached its peak of power under Rajasanagara in the fourteenth
century through the brilliant vision and diplomatic skill of its minister, Gajah
Mada. Representatives from this empire reached most of the major Indonesian
islands and beyond during his time, and Gajah Mada ventured out himself
to distant lands. To this day, some people in the eastern Indonesian islands
claim that they descend from the Majapahit or particularly from its dynamic
minister. Legends from Bali tell of many cultural origins from Majapahit,
including the founding of Bali’s most sacred temple to this day, Besakih.
Majapahit later became an exemplary model for twentieth century nationalist
leaders in Java. Conditions, however, eventually changed drastically in the
archipelago, leading to the decline of this great empire.
One summarizes that the “hemisphere-wide access of Majapahit’s spice
trade was its undoing. And the spices, like the islands themselves, had
developed a siren quality that was irresistible.”22 The spice trade in the eastern islands grew so enormous and international that the Majapahit could
no longer control it—particularly after ships sailed in from Europe, upsetting the balance of power in the archipelago. Atlantic shipping through the
Indonesian islands solidiﬁed powers of the port communities, subsequently
beginning a process of European colonization.
Coastal communities in Java eventually defeated the Majapahit and
established a new empire of Mataram in the sixteenth century. Its leaders
were Javanese Muslims, likely converted through exposure to Islamic inﬂuences in port cities. After this, Islam diffused through Java. While some of

12

CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA

the regal families converted, Islam nonetheless represented a rejection of the
special religious connections formerly available only to royals. This compelling new faith was open to all people, who could pray directly to a central
God. Hinduism and Buddhism had developed as court cultures not accessible
to common people. Indeed, many commoners had been severely exploited in
constant, unpaid laboring to construct the Hindu–Buddhist megastructures
of their kings. The centuries-long construction of Borobudur probably bankrupted the region of central Java, exhausting its population.
Ironically, many ports in Indonesia today with sizeable Muslim populations once allied with the Majapahit Empire. On the eastern Indonesian island of Sumba, a number of Muslims adamantly claim descent from the
Majapahit minister, Gajah Mada. In 1994, a high-school English teacher
declared fervently, “I was born to say that Gajah Mada died in Sumba!”23
Buddhism and Hinduism, however, never took hold in eastern islands
such as Sumba, Timor, and Flores. Islam came through traders in port towns
(where it tended to remain as a religious enclave), but these islands had developed strong animistic cultures apart from the mainstream of world faiths and
felt little need to change. In fact, outside religions posed a serious threat to
their locally based power structures. House societies characterized the eastern
islands, with ancestral homes as cosmological centers of people’s notions of
the universe. Such systems continue to an extent in this region, which differs
signiﬁcantly from western Indonesia. Eastern islands long had developed
headhunting societies, with domains in frequent warfare with one another.
Headhunting formed part of a cosmological belief system related to power
and fertility and also a rite of passage to manhood.
The Spread of Islam and the Arrival of Europeans

In the early ﬁfteenth century, A Srivijaya prince founded the city of
Melaka on the Malay Peninsula. This port city grew to be the most important trade center in Southeast Asia, controlling regional commerce from the
east, west, north, and south, and drawing in peoples from around the world.
Melaka gained power early on through Chinese protection and trade. Yet the
Portuguese seized Melaka in 1511. The former leaders and many residents
moved upriver and formed a new settlement to avoid their control. Still,
this situated the Portuguese in a proﬁtable location from which to control
an immense amount of commerce. The fall of Melaka to Catholic Portugal
prompted a rippling religious fervor through Indonesia and a rise in power of
Islamic sultanates, such as Aceh and Minangkabau in Sumatra, Banjarmasin in
Kalimantan, Makasar and Bugis in Sulawesi, Ternate and Tidore in Maluku,
and kingdoms throughout Java. The Aceh people of northern Sumatra waged

LAND, PEOPLE, AND HISTORY

13

continuous war against the Portuguese in Melaka until ﬁnally they assisted
the Dutch in conquering the port in 1640. Yet Aceh gained nothing as the
Dutch seized command. After this, Aceh went into relative decline.
By the ﬁfteenth century, Islam had spread through Indonesia and a number
of sultanates were established across the islands, notably in port towns. As in
Java, this new religion likely attracted many because it professed egalitarianism
in regions dominated by oppressive class systems. However, at least early on,
Islam was not a liberating force for the general population, which long had
been suppressed by the kings and aristocracy.24 Aristocratic Javanese Muslims
became known as the priyayi (upper class) and Islamic kings ruled from palaces
through the same feudal system that had gripped the island for centuries. Islam
mixed with Javanese mysticism and its practice became determined by former
realities of the Indonesian situation,25 as had other new religions in the past.
In southern Sulawesi, the Muslim empire of Makasar of Gowa grew extremely powerful between 1550–1660 because of its dominant port and
strong leadership.26 Bugis (also Muslims) were sea-faring rivals of the Makasar.
Like much of Indonesia, Sulawesi practiced slavery. People either captured in
warfare or born into hereditary servitude were traded between islands. South
Sulawesians were brilliant boat builders and navigators (and remain so to
the present). Both Makasar and Bugis seamen sailed to the west coast of
West Papua seeking slaves. Many migrated to other islands and some actually
reached the northern coast of Australia by the seventeenth century in search
of sea cucumbers (called trepang) to trade with China. Today, Aboriginal communities in a coastal region of the Northern Territory, Australia, use certain
south Sulawesi terms and include some descendants of the Indonesian seamen, who also took some Australians back to Sulawesi.
Thus, Indonesian ships spread Islam and trade goods through the archipelago
and brought diverse groups into contact with one another. They also spread the
Malay language, the lingua franca of trade in many ports, learned by foreigners
to trade or rule. Eventually, Malay became the ofﬁcial language of the Republic
of Indonesia, taking on its own character as Bahasa Indonesia, spoken now by
most people across the nation in addition to their local languages.
The Imposition of Colonialism

European colonialism largely operated through co-opting Indonesian leaders. Colonial ventures are best understood in terms of how they “ﬁt” into
local regimes of political power—whether as cooperative or adversarial forces.
An important historical insight relates how “both European and Indonesian
histories put the Dutch at the center of the narrative. … This mode of writing
history answers and satisﬁes the demands of imperialism and nationalism, but

14

CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA

obliterates the histories of Indonesian societies.”27 The nationalist versions of
histories across the archipelago typically cast Indonesians as victims of outsiders
(mainly Dutch) rather than revealing how Indonesian elite classes were also
in league with foreigners. Moreover, European colonists moved among many
other trading peoples throughout the archipelago. In most of Indonesia, the
Dutch did not take hold until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Nonetheless, colonialism was an imposition causing major changes in some
regions, while creating fateful repercussions in the Western world.
By the early sixteenth century, the Portuguese had ventured into Indonesian
waters in search of spices—such as cloves, nutmeg, mace, and pepper.
Nutmeg and cloves had attained an almost magical quality in Europe, where
people carried pomanders made from these spices as protection against the
plague. The Banda Islands of Maluku drew the spice-seeking Europeans to
follow. Shortly thereafter this escalated into a spice race, a furiously competitive marathon for control of one of the world’s smallest island groups drawing
ships from Portugal, Spain, England, Denmark, and Holland.
As the western islands of Java and Sumatra were predominantly Islamic by
the sixteenth century and Bali had developed a strong Hindu culture, Portuguese settlements and missionaries faced less resistance in inﬁltrating animist
regions of eastern Indonesia, such as Flores, Timor, and Maluku. European
ships entering the archipelago were mostly war galleons. The foreigners thus
conquered and maintained control of ports through superior ﬁrepower, experience in naval warfare, and sheer aggressiveness.
The Portuguese established Catholic missions in North Sulawesi, in Ternate
and Ambon in Maluku, and in Flores and Timor. In the early 1600s, however, they were supplanted by the Dutch and thereafter remained only in
parts of Flores and Timor. Portuguese years in Maluku were violent, echoing
a European medieval spirit of invasive Catholic Crusaders. Moreover, the
colonists were more bent on looting and gaining personal wealth than with
any sort of trade. Thus, their demise in Maluku came about through the
hatred of the people they were trying to colonize.
The Dutch East India Company (Vereenigte Oost-Indische Compagnie—generally called the VOC) began trading in Indonesia in the seventeenth century,
eventually developing into a colonial power across the archipelago and ousting
the Portuguese (who retained two colonies in Timor until 1974). Initially,
Dutch interests were limited to the Maluku Spice Islands.
One Dutch Governor General during the time of the VOC merits special
mention, so extreme was his ruthless imperialism. Jan Pieterszoon Coen established a post in the Banda Islands of Maluku in 1621 to exploit the ﬂourishing
nutmeg crops. Coen sold off most of the population into slavery and set up
medieval torture chambers to deal with enemies. He hired Japanese mercenaries

LAND, PEOPLE, AND HISTORY

15

to behead, burn, and dismember people, including English attempting to
trade in the islands. Afraid the English might gain control and despising the
local people, Coen ordered the uprooting of many of Banda’s nutmeg trees for
transport to other islands. Later, the English did the same, robbing the islands’
trees and taking tons of its unique soil to places as far as Sri Lanka. Under
Coen’s vicious rule, Dutch chopped down the nutmeg trees on the small island
of Run, part of the Banda archipelago. The ecology of the Banda Islands, on
which nutmeg had thrived, never fully recovered from this period.
Extremely hostile relations continued to grow in the seventeenth century
between England and Holland over worldwide colonial rights, battles, and
atrocities in Indonesia. Eventually, the English mounted an armada and
invaded Manhattan Island, then administered by the Dutch under Pieter
Stuyvesant as New Amsterdam. What eventually transpired from this invasion
was that on September 8, 1664 Stuyvesant signed off the rights to Manhattan
Island in exchange for the tiny British-controlled Banda island of Run
(a rather bitter irony after Coen’s earlier destruction of its nutmeg trees) and
Surinam, South America. This remains one of the least known and most
bizarre real estate deals ever and a major turn in American history.
The Netherlands government took over the bankrupt Dutch East India
Company in the eighteenth century and proceeded to create an efﬁciently
organized colonial administration across Indonesia. The colonists developed
a small port of northwestern Java into their central post, which they named
Batavia. Much later, this became the city of Jakarta. Holland constructed a
colonial empire over three hundred years and the Indonesian islands became
world-famous as the Dutch East Indies. Many islands, however, did not experience a Dutch presence until the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.
Dutch missionaries converted people to the Protestant Dutch Reformed
Church in largely non-Muslim areas of Indonesia: the Batak of Sumatra, the
Dayak of Kalimantan, peoples of the Lesser Sunda Islands of eastern Indonesia,
the Toraja and Manado peoples of Sulawesi, and peoples of West Papua. These
were all animistic regions where the Dutch categorized inhabitants as “heathens.”
Europe funded Christian missionaries, Catholic and Protestant. To this day
many receive ﬁnancial support from churches in the Western world.
The colonists exploited Indonesians in numerous ways, through land seizure, unpaid plantation labor, forcing new crops upon them (such as coffee
and rubber) for Dutch beneﬁt, exacting taxes, and inﬂicting severe punishments. As did European colonists the world over, Holland controlled the
types, production, and prices of products in Indonesia and exported them
to their own proﬁt. They also stimulated a serious population boom in Java,
however, not necessarily out of avarice. Colonists provided medicines that
enabled more children to survive. Also, people began to have larger families

16

CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA

to earn more from their children’s labor. Today, Java is one of the most
densely over-populated places in the world and this began through Dutch
colonial policies. At the same time, the colonists introduced new technologies and materials (such as rubber) to Indonesians, facilitated world exposure
to Indonesian dyes, textile trades, and other arts, and provided many elite
Indonesians with Dutch educations and political ideas.
Holland also strengthened and perpetuated the power of the elite priyayi class
in Java. The novel Max Havelaar describes priyayi corruption and complicity with
the Dutch, written by the colonial ofﬁcial Douwes Dekker living in Java, using
the pen name Multatuli. Greatly disturbed by the abuses he witnessed, Dekker’s
book describes life for the unfortunate common folk under joint Dutch and Javanese elite control. First published in 1860, the novel profoundly affected Dutch
progressives and Indonesian nationalist leaders planning for independence.
For a brief time the British took command of Indonesian ports during the
early nineteenth century, but Holland regained control and remained the
dominant power in Indonesia until World War II. By the 1920s, students
across Indonesia were organizing youth groups against the Dutch. In 1926,
they merged as the Youth Congress, voting to unite Indonesia as one nation,
with Malay as its language. Their symbol became a red-and-white ﬂag, eventually becoming the banner of the Indonesian nation.
The Republic of Indonesia

Japan invaded Indonesia in 1942. Initially, many Indonesians looked to
the Japanese as Asian liberators, but their optimism was short-lived. While
the Dutch had often been harsh in their colonial rule, Japanese occupation
was far worse and Indonesians were relieved when this period ended in 1945.
Many recall the Japanese era as a time of extreme hardship and starvation.
Much of the rice that Indonesians were forced to produce was exported to
Japan. After Japanese departure, Indonesian nationalists led by presidentto-be Sukarno28 and vice-president-to-be Muhammad Hatta declared the
archipelago an independent nation—the Republic of Indonesia. Ironically,
knowledge of European political ideas learned from the Dutch galvanized the
nationalists to oust the former colonists. As summarized below:
The ﬁrst generation to beneﬁt from the expansion of Dutch schooling under the socalled “ethical policy” (developmentalism in today’s terminology) then began to absorb
ideas of progress, education, science, freedom, and democracy to form organizations
to promote them.29

During their occupation, the Japanese actually put Sukarno and Hatta in
power and oversaw the writing of their constitution. These Nationalist leaders

initially worked within the framework of Japan’s World War II propaganda
against the Europeans and American Allies. This period permitted the growth
of Nationalist aspirations throughout the Indonesian population, especially
among young people.30 After Japan’s wartime defeat, Indonesians moved
rapidly for independence. Sukarno became President and Hatta became VicePresident. The ﬁrst country to recognize the new republic was Egypt.
For three years following the end of World War II, the Netherlands
strove to re-establish control in Indonesia. Following ﬁerce resistance from
Indonesians and facing international pressure to concede independence to
the nation, in 1949 Holland transferred sovereignty to the entire archipelago
except West Papua. In 1950, a new Indonesian constitution went into effect,
creating on paper a united nation-state.
The Sukarno years to follow, however, became a bizarre and disappointing
era for the new country, characterized by the president’s grandiose schemes
that never materialized. Much political chaos resulted through widespread
disorganization. Sukarno was far more adept at revolutionary rhetoric than
good governance. Under his presidency, Indonesia relapsed into a kind of neofeudal system, although Sukarno’s stated policy was “Guided Democracy.”

18

CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA

Colonial-era laws restricting freedom of expression and the right to assemble
remained in effect and dissidence was treason.31 While building exorbitantly
expensive, self-aggrandizing monuments (as had ancient Javanese kings), he
ignored worsening economic conditions in Indonesia. He gained a tawdry
reputation as a womanizer, marrying six times. His extramarital affairs made
him a legend.
Still, Sukarno had skillfully motivated Indonesians to nationhood, was
loved by common folk, and many remember him with gratitude. One historian
considers that Sukarno genuinely loved the heterogeneous nation that he had
helped to build. He had spread national consciousness and ideals of freedom
to even the poorest of the poor. Moreover, he was without racial prejudice and
attempted to protect minorities and different religions, including animism.32
While a highly charismatic leader able to rally immense support, as president,
Sukarno, nonetheless, was unable to plan for his people with any practicality.
His stalwart ideology closed him to dealing pragmatically with much of the
world, in a time when Indonesia needed international support.
Sukarno turned his back on Western aid while catering to Soviet Russia and
Communist China. He pulled Indonesia out of the United Nations in protest of its recognition of Malaysia. Politically and economically for his nation,
such moves were unrealistic, self-defeating, and cost him international assistance in a country that desperately needed it. By 1965, inﬂation in Indonesia
had reached 650 percent. Economic conditions severely worsened as aid
stopped from Western nations along with a vital shipping trade. Extremist
Islamic groups gained strength in parts of the archipelago. Corruption grew
as government ofﬁcials began pocketing funds; many had no other dependable income. An Indonesian writer regards the Sukarno years as “almost 10
years of the darkest and most irrational period in the Republic’s history.”33
Sukarno’s health began to fail by 1965, and he appeared to be losing his capabilities to those around him in Jakarta. Some regarded the volcanic eruption
of Gunung Agung in 1963 on the island of Bali as conﬁrming the deterioration
in the president’s leadership powers.
On September 30, 1965, an unsuccessful attempt at an alleged communist
coup took place in Jakarta. Details of this event remain a partial mystery, but
Sukarno’s presidential guard was attempting a power grab. Several army generals were murdered and their bodies thrown into a dry well. A gunshot also
killed the small daughter of a surviving general. Newspapers and radio stations
reported that the men had been tortured and sexually mutilated, blaming
the atrocity on a communist women’s group. Later, autopsies ordered by
Suharto himself showed no evidence of torture or mutilation, but the news
already had swept Indonesia and spread around the world. A counter coup
took place, where the Indonesian military took control. When lurid stories of

LAND, PEOPLE, AND HISTORY

19

the torture-murders multiplied, a mass reaction of rage and violence ignited
Indonesia.
A mad ferocity erupted, resulting in the slaying of hundreds of thousands
of people, communists and non-communists. Frenzy particularly raged
through communities in Java and Bali, as people slaughtered known communists, but also settled countless personal animosities and grudges through
murders under the guise of national patriotism. Bali, famed in the Western
world as an exotic and tranquil tropical paradise, became rife with executions
during this horriﬁc period in Indonesian history, as neighbor turned against
neighbor. The killings became the largest domestic slaughter in Indonesian
history, with uncounted numbers of people dead, but certainly more than
half a million. The army went unchecked, as did civilians carrying out
“anti-communist” purges.
While some Indonesians expressed pride in extinguishing the Indonesian
Communist Party, others still feel ashamed of the barbarous mayhem of these
times,34 and few can make sense of it. An historian argues that such an extreme
wave of killing gripped Indonesia at this time as “an intensiﬁcation of modern state violence, the foundations for which were laid during the colonial
period.”35 That is, Indonesian civilians carried out what they had witnessed
European colonists and later the Indonesian army doing, but motivated by
their own frustrations and grievances. Yet the extent of the violence during
1965–1966 remains a largely inexplicable tragedy in Indonesian history.
New Order Indonesia

Sukarno lost all support at this time and resigned in March of 1966, handing the presidency over to General Suharto. Exiled to the city of Bogor, near
Jakarta, the ex-president bitterly lived out his years largely under house arrest.
The new regime was called New Order Indonesia (Orde Baru). President
Suharto immediately set into motion a process of centralizing power involving a tight system of military control. Suharto’s authority was absolute and
his party, Golkar, became the only one legal—forbidding freedom of expression or criticism of its policies. Newspapers were shut down and dissidents
jailed, as Indonesia became a yet further resolved military dictatorship.
Human rights aside (and the abuses were countless), the New Order
Years did accomplish much. Suharto had promised to improve the welfare
of Indonesian commoners and to an appreciable extent this happened. His
party’s achievements in agriculture, education, and other welfare areas were
impressive, especially when compared to the record of the Dutch regime.36
Medical clinics, roads, bridges, and schools were built in remote parts of
Indonesia, and a new generation across the archipelago became literate and

20

CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA

learned to speak the national language. These achievements were all the
more remarkable, as they happened over a relatively short period of time in a
geographically vast and ethnically diverse new nation.
However, all those absorbed into the Republic of Indonesia did not necessarily want to be. Aceh in northern Sumatra and some of the eastern islands were
disinclined to accept Javanese rule. Many regions preferred to function as they
were while achieving autonomy. In Ambon and surrounding Maluku Islands,
Christians fought to attain their own republic at the time of national independence, even asking help against Java from the Netherlands. Controversially,
the United Nations ceded the formerly Dutch-controlled, western portion of
Papua New Guinea to the Republic of Indonesia in 1969 and it was renamed
Irian Jaya. Since that time, local independence movements have persisted. After
Portugal withdrew from East Timor in 1974, Indonesia, under Suharto
(encouraged and funded by the United States, which feared the spread of
communism in Southeast Asia after the Vietnam War), invaded one year later
and set up command. Many in East Timor fought for decades for independence,
which they ﬁnally gained through a popular vote in 1999 (after Suharto was no
longer Indonesia’s president). This independence came with much devastation
and bloodshed. The Indonesian years in East Timor had been harshly oppressive
and violent against local resistance movements. Nonetheless, Indonesia provided
East Timor with an infrastructure and public schools that the Portuguese had
not. As the Indonesian army left the newly independent nation, they vengefully
incinerated much of what stood, leaving the region in scorched ruins.
The New Order had constantly felt threatened by both the left (communists)
and the right (Islamic militants). It fervently promoted the founding principles
of Indonesian statehood—the Pancasila—(meaning “Five Principles,” originally devised by Sukarno) to instill an ideology of harmony and order among
the people. These principles are: belief in one God, nationalism, humanitarianism, social justice, and democracy. The regime also adopted and spread the
slogan of “Unity in Diversity” to demonstrate an inclusive policy to the many
religious and ethnic groups in Indonesia and thus gain their support.
Suharto’s own fear and mistrust of the Indonesian people, however, characterized his thinking about politics.37 Anyone in opposition to him faced prison
or execution. Indonesians grew weary of the military’s unbridled power over
them. Moreover, the army controlled tremendous resources in Indonesia,
such as management of forests, which they were selling out to multi-national
corporations. This not only displaced communities, but destroyed eco-systems.
People became fed up with the blatant corruption and greed of the Suharto
family. Suharto’s wife and children controlled fortunes, television stations,
and businesses for which they were never held accountable. The family also
directed much of the propaganda of the Suharto regime.

LAND, PEOPLE, AND HISTORY

21

Natural disasters, such as a tsunami hitting Maumere, Flores in 1992 (killing about 2,500 people and leaving many homeless) exposed to many the
rottenness of the Indonesian political system. Virtually nothing of the foreign
aid money in response to this tragedy actually reached the victims, but was
pocketed by corrupt New Order ofﬁcials.
In 1997, an economic crisis swept Southeast Asia, beginning with the devaluation of the Thai baht. As a never stable economy internationally, Indonesia
suffered tremendously as its rupiah plunged, at one point losing 80 percent of
its former value. This brought hardship upon many common people, further
increasing resentment of the wealth and corruption of those in power. This
period became known as the Krismon (monetary crisis), progressively escalating
into the Kristal (total crisis). During this time, the global ecological calamity
of El Niño caused a long drought and failed harvests across Indonesia. These
natural and economic disasters signaled to many a need for political change.
The aging Suharto was losing leadership potency after more than thirty
years in ofﬁce, as violence broke out across the islands: riots and ﬁrestorms
raged in Jakarta, pro-Indonesian militias were destroying East Timor, and
Aceh was in a vicious battle for independence. Indonesia fell into catastrophic disorder. Foreign investment and tourism—an important industry
in Indonesia that had supported many people—dropped dramatically, leaving
numerous destitute. Still, Suharto continued his “crony capitalism” and did
not make necessary economic reforms. Thus, he took the brunt of blame
from Indonesians for their dire conditions.
As Suharto prepared to be elected to his seventh ﬁve-year term as president, student protests began to grow. Four students were shot and killed in
Jakarta on May 12, 1998. Their deaths and funerals unleashed rage throughout the city. Rioting people, largely the poor, incinerated large sections of
Jakarta. This turning point became known as the “May Riots.” Chinese businesses were targets of much of the violence, as they represented wealthy afﬁliates in the New Order regime. Simultaneously, gangs of thugs in league
with the New Order raped Chinese women. After this, the army deserted
Suharto, leaving him powerless. The German-educated B. J. Habibie became
president under the Golkar party for a transitional period.
Sometimes history takes a surprising turn, regardless of political afﬁliations. Inﬂuenced by Western notions of democracy, Habibie began to create
policies to curb the tremendous power of the Indonesian military and to allow
the media and people more freedoms, including expression of discontent. He
also made public that he was willing to consider autonomy for regions like
East Timor. This new liberalism, however, ultimately led to his undoing. In
1999, Habibie lost a vote of conﬁdence in parliament and withdrew from the
upcoming presidential election.

22

CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA

Despite his reformist policies, most Indonesians regarded Habibie as a
weak leader, especially as violence across the nation continued to rage. Conditions had become too dire during the late Suharto years, producing a spirit
of anarchy, and reform became irrelevant in a country torn apart by intense
regional conﬂicts. War between clan groups such as had not erupted for a
century broke out in areas like western Sumba. In November of 1998, scores
of villages burned and many decapitated bodies ﬁlled a river—echoing headhunting times of the past. This battle arose from resentments of the political
abuses of a local New Order ofﬁcial.38
A new subversive fervor escalated through Indonesia near the end of the
New Order regime, after years of repression. Growing access to international
media and a new freedom of expression under Habibie unleashed a wave of
anti-government sentiments, even on Indonesian television. This never before
had happened and grew into a popular cultural rage. But perhaps the most
revolutionary inﬂuence during this time was an uncontrollable and increasing
access to the Internet. Not only could Indonesians now enjoy unrestricted
exposure to international information, but they also could freely communicate
between themselves. This gave them a powerful tool for subversion, as well as
for organizing political factions.39
The End of the New Order

In the national election of 1999, Sukarno’s daughter, Megawati Sukarnoputri
of the Democratic Party of Indonesia, actually won the popular vote.
Parliament largely resisted her inauguration, however, partly due to Muslim
disapproval of a female public leader. Golkar, the losing party, in control since
1965, also played a central role in blocking her assent. When news of this
reached the people, riots ensued in Jakarta. Finally a compromise took place:
Abdurrahmin Wahid (popularly called Gus Dur) of the National Awakening
Party became President and Megawati, Vice-President. The new president’s
party was Muslim but favored accommodating all kinds of Indonesians.
Wahid proceeded to ﬁre a top general, Wiranto, accused of supervising genocide in East Timor. This did not endear him to the military.
Civilian-military clashes swept Indonesia during this time, and violence
escalated between Muslims and Christians. “Ethnic cleansing” became a reality in Kalimantan as local Dayaks murdered residents transmigrated from the
island of Madura. A full-scale religious war and devastating ﬁres broke out on
the island of Ambon, incited by a ﬁght between a Christian bus driver and
a Muslim passenger. Local gangs were taking control in provincial cities like
Kupang, West Timor, and much of the island of Lombok. Many thought
that the Golkar party and hard-line military men were behind much of the

LAND, PEOPLE, AND HISTORY

23

disorder to destabilize the new presidency. People in a number of port cities
reported that boatloads of young men arrived and began inciting violence
while traveling in gangs. Many suspected that the Suhartos and Golkar were
funding them.
President Wahid was the ﬁrst Indonesian president to try to ﬁnd peaceful
solutions to regional conﬂicts and favored autonomy for areas such as West
Papua and Aceh so that they might still remain in the fold of the Republic.40 This infuriated the military and the formerly ruling Golkar party, who
then subverted Wahid, feeling his policies supported separatism. Wahid had
suffered strokes, was blind, and in poor health. Through military efforts he
was impeached in July 2001, and Megawati became President. She ﬁlled her
cabinet with elite supporters who would keep her in power.
Her presidency, while an important symbolic gain for the aspirations of
Indonesian women, was nonetheless dishearteningly ineffectual for her supporters and most others. In basic ways, she ruled as an aloof, elite priyayi,
out of touch and inactive in dealing with problems of common people. As
described by one political scientist: “The entire government, not just the
presidency, appeared to be on auto-pilot.”41 Political parties broke into many
factions as anarchy and violence further ﬂared across Indonesia. Infrastructures crumbled through mismanagement of funds and lack of maintenance,
and Megawati’s promise of Reformation became irrelevant. Conﬂicts in Aceh,
Maluku, West Papua, and parts of Sulawesi worsened; crime increased everywhere; and people throughout Indonesia took justice into their own hands.
Disarray and decay pervaded the nation, to a degree that even the rain gutters
of Jakarta’s streets were left uncleaned and ﬂoods then devastated parts of the
city. Only the military retained some cohesion.
Disaster struck Indonesia on October 12, 2002, when a terrorist car
bomb exploded in front of a Bali nightclub, killing more than two hundred
people and destroying much of a city block. A radical Islamic group claimed
responsibility, stating that their target had been Americans, in retaliation for
George W. Bush’s Middle Eastern policies. Most of those in the nightclub,
however, were Australians and Indonesians. A total of 88 Australians and 38
Indonesians died, as well as 6 Britons, 6 Germans, and 4 Dutch people.42
While international investigative agents ﬂew in from the United States and
Australia, the Balinese police succeeded in capturing some of the perpetrators, tracing them through reports of local residents. Tourism all but ceased
to Bali. Indonesians everywhere were in shock.
With Megawati as president, the military grew fractured and their budgets
plummeted. Some became involved in organized crime such as prostitution
and drug trafﬁcking. Common people across Indonesia grew ever more disillusioned. Megawati had, ironically, run for ofﬁce as the “people’s candidate,”

24

CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA

yet the price of rice continued to rise, medical clinics closed in rural regions for
lack of funds, and regional conﬂicts were rampant. One eastern Indonesian
woman expressed with dismay during the Megawati period: “Maybe under
Suharto things were not good, but they were better than this. Now we have
chaos and decay all around us.”43
A Shift in Power

In September, 2004, Indonesia elected a new president, Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono (called “S.B.Y.” by Indonesians). A retired general who conveyed
hope of strength, reform, and much-needed order through the Republic,
many Indonesians viewed S.B.Y. as a man who could get things done after
the desultory Megawati years. With his Vice-President, Jusuf Kalla, S.B.Y.
won the ﬁrst direct election for president in Indonesian history, where citizens could vote for an individual and not a party.
Since Yudhoyono’s presidency, efforts at reforming the Indonesian system
have made some progress, and many have worked earnestly for this. Indonesia
enjoys a relatively free press and much-needed reforms in the judicial system
have begun to take hold. Anti-corruption commissions have succeeded in
indicting politicians, to a degree formerly not possible. Yet S.B.Y. inherited
an immense international debt and a nation in turmoil. Apart from regional
separatist movements, he now faces the spread and violence of radical terrorist
groups across Indonesia. Importantly, he must appear strong to Indonesians,
who expect a leader to deal harshly with opponents or law-breakers. Yet
the cronies of Suharto still hold considerable sway, as they dominate large
businesses and capital ventures. The task of bringing together government,
business, and society to create a more equitable and balanced Indonesia will
take an immense amount of dedication and work from those committed to
this goal. As ever, they may ask help from the supernatural to help them succeed
through this period.
NOTES
1. James Siegel, The Rope of God (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 4.
2. The atmospheric debris from Krakatoa dramatically affected sunsets in Europe in the
1880s. Many believe that this inﬂuenced artists of the time, such as the British painter, Turner,
famed for his vivid skyscapes. See Simon Winchester, Krakatoa—The Day the World Exploded:
August 27, 1883 (New York: Perennial, 2003), 280n.
3. Winchester, Krakatoa, 292.
4. See Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago (New York: Dover, 1962).
5. David Joel Steinberg, ed., In Search of Southeast Asia: A Modern History, rev. ed.
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987), 22–23, paraphrased.

LAND, PEOPLE, AND HISTORY

25

6. See Clifford Geertz on Balinese irrigation organizations in Negara: The Theatre State in
Nineteenth- Century Bali (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980).
7. See Peter S. Bellwood, Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1997).
8. See Gregory Forth, “Hominids, Hairy Hominids, and the Science of Humanity.”
Anthropology Today 21, no. 3 (June 2005): 13–17.
9. Robert Cribb, Historical Atlas of Indonesia (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,
2000), 31.
10. See Bellwood, Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago.
11. Cribb, Historical Atlas of Indonesia, 29.
12. Paraphrased from Cribb, Historical Atlas of Indonesia, 37.
13. Cribb, Historical Atlas of Indonesia, 37.
14. Cribb, Historical Atlas of Indonesia, 36.
15. Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450–1680—Volume One: The
Lands below the Winds (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 2.
16. Cribb, Historical Atlas of Indonesia, 76.
17. Keith W. Taylor, “The Early Kingdoms,” in The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia:
Volume One, Part One, From Early Times to C. 1500, ed. Nicholas Tarling (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999), 136–182.
18. Benedict Anderson reﬁned this model, as described in his essay “The Idea of Power in
Javanese Culture,” in Culture and Politics in Indonesia, ed. Claire Holt (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1972), 1–69.
19. Wiener, Margaret J. Visible and Invisible Realms: Power, Magic, and Colonial Conquest
in Bali (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 74.
20. See Taylor, “The Early Kingdoms,” 173–176 for a succinct history of Srivijaya.
21. Kenneth R. Hall, “Economic History of Early Southeast Asia,” in Nicholas Tarling,
ed., The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia: Volume One, Part One, Early Times to C. 1500
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 205.
22. Taylor, “The Early Kingdoms,” 227–228.
23. Personal communication to Jill Forshee, February 5, 1994.
24. Mochtar Lubis, Indonesia: Land under the Rainbow (Singapore: Oxford University
Press, 1990), 60.
25. Lubis, Indonesia, 59.
26. Anthony Reid, “Merdeka: The Concept of Freedom in Indonesia,” in Asian Freedoms:
The Idea of Freedom in East and Southeast Asia, ed. David Kelly and Anthony Reid (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1999), 147.
27. Jean Gelman Taylor, Indonesia: Peoples and Histories (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2003), 144. Taylor’s book provides numerous insights into speciﬁc and diverse histories
across the Indonesian archipelago, taking account of a rich variety of people, communities,
and interactions.
28. Many people in Java customarily use one name. Sukarno was the ofﬁcial name of this
leader, as Suharto was the name of the president to follow him.
29. Reid, “Merdeka,” 152.
30. Lubis, Indonesia,173.
31. See Taylor, Indonesia, 343.
32. See Benedict Anderson, paraphrased here from “Bung Karno and the Fossilization of
Soekarno’s Thought,” Indonesia 74 (October 2002): 1–19.
33. Lubis, Indonesia,183.

26

CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA

34. See M. C. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia since C. 1300, 2nd ed. (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), 284–303.
35. Henk Schulte Nordholt, “A Genealogy of Violence,” in Roots of Violence in Indonesia,
ed. Freek Colombijn and J. Thomas Lindblad (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2002), 44.
36. Ricklefs, A History of Modern Indonesia, 304. Even Suharto’s staunchest critics often
concede his accomplishments.
37. R. E. Elson, “In Fear of the People: Suharto and the Justiﬁcation of State-Sponsored
Violence under the New Order,” in Roots of Violence in Indonesia, ed. Freek Colombijn and J.
Thomas Lindblad (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2002), 171–195.
38. See David Mitchell, “Tragedy in Sumba: Why Neighbors Hacked Each Other to
Death In a Remote Part of Indonesia,” Inside Indonesia, April–June 1999, 18–20.
39. See Lorraine V. Aragon’s in-depth analysis of how new media freedoms and access
to the Internet in the post-Suharto period played out concerning belligerence and violence
between Christians and Muslims in the region of Poso, Sulawesi in “Mass Media Fragmentation and Narratives of Violent Action in Sulawesi’s Poso Conﬂict,” Indonesia 79 (April 2005):
1–55. Also see David T. Hill, “East Timor and the Internet: Global Political Leverage in/on
Indonesia,” Indonesia 73 (April 2002): 25–51.
40. Liem Soei Liong, “It’s the Military, Stupid!” in Roots of Violence in Indonesia, ed. Freek
Colombijn and J. Thomas Lindblad (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2002), 197–225.
41. Dan Slater, “Indonesia’s Accountability Trap: Party Cartels and Presidential Power
after Democratic Transition,” Indonesia 78 (October 2004): 61–92.
42. “Bali Death Toll Set at 202,” BBC News. Accessed February 19, 2003 from http://
news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/asia-paciﬁc/2778923.stm.
43. Personal communication to Jill Forshee, December 1, 2002, from a businesswoman
on the island of Sumba.

Vickers, Adrian. A History of Modern Indonesia. New York: Cambridge University Press,
2005.
Wallace, Alfred Russel. The Malay Archipelago. New York: Dover, [1869] 1962.
Winchester, Simon. Krakatoa, The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883. New York:
Perennial (HarperCollins), 2004.

2
Thought and Religion
Indonesians have adopted world faiths in myriad manners, blending them
with their pre-existing cosmological systems and reconﬁguring them to adapt
to unique societies. This merging has produced extremely complicated ways
of thought and religious practices that have intrigued scholars throughout
the years. Indonesian religions are multi-layered. For instance, Islam reveals
many mystical elements of animism in Java and beyond, as does Hinduism in
Bali, and Christianity throughout the islands. The intricacies of Indonesian
thought and religion emerge through other aspects of life, such as arts, cuisine,
social relations, and architecture.
While nearly 90 percent of Indonesians are Muslims, most practice their
faith with a synthesis of former beliefs, including Hindu–Buddhism and
native animism. A mystical quality imbues Indonesian Islam, and leaders still
visit pre-Islamic spiritual sites for strength. Christians also have fused their
newer religion with older belief systems. Most Indonesians thus maintain a
hybridism in religious creeds and practices.
ANIMISM
Talking about thought and religion throughout Indonesia is a complicated
matter, as in any part of the world. To begin to understand various Indonesian
ways of thinking and religious convictions, one needs to ﬁrst consider animism, which long preceded imported world religions in the archipelago and
currently weaves through most of them. Animism is a type of belief system
(indeed, a kind of religion) that regards all of nature to contain spiritual
power. In Europe or North America, this is called “paganism.” In Indonesia

30

CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA

beliefs in spirits of the earth, air, and waters combine with concerns about
the ongoing supernatural powers of ancestors; visible and invisible realms
both hold sway in everyday life.1 Nature includes guardian spirits as well as
evil ones, residing in houses, trees, rocks, mountaintops, or any number of
places. To stay in the good graces of these spirits, people make offerings or
acknowledge them through ceremonies, chants, songs, or simple respectful
phrases. Departed relatives become ancestors requiring ceremonial offerings
and prayers to avoid offending them and creating anger toward the living.
People often consider natural and supernatural spirits as the primary causes
of misfortunes as well as successes. As Indonesia is so diverse in cultures and
geography, speciﬁc beliefs about spirits vary greatly from place to place. If,
as in Bali and Java, world religions such as Hinduism and Islam have been
in place for centuries, local people have blended and even elaborated their
previous beliefs with these newer faiths in ways that seem to ﬁt. This is also
true of many Indonesian Christians. Unconverted animist societies persist in
Indonesia, especially in the eastern islands.
Many animists express that they feel no need to convert to another religion, explaining that their own still works for them. Often events reinforce
their beliefs. Elaborate rituals after a long, dry season on eastern islands like
Sumba or Timor do appear to bring on the rains. Certain bends in roads or
rivers are sites of numerous deaths—so people consider them haunted by
dangerous spirits. Jealousy or hatred produces curses, from which people fall
ill or die, from all appearances. All such phenomena may seem like superstition, but animists view them as cause and effect logical events to explain their
worlds and lives.
All contemporary world faiths include elements of animism (or paganism),
based upon what people believed and did in ancient times, before newer religions took hold. These elements include miracles, divine interventions, invisible
spiritual realms, taboos, mythic beings, and the need to make offerings and
pray to unseen powers. Considered comparatively, such religious views are
no less plausible than doctrines of world faiths. In fact, most major world
religions retain something of former animist or pagan rituals, symbols, and
ideas—like the Christmas tree of Christianity, tales of the magical parting
of waters (like the Red Sea) of Judaism, or dietary prohibitions of Muslims,
Hindus, Jews, and others.
Animism usually differs from world religions in that its tenets and practices
relate to speciﬁcally indigenous spirits, places, and ancestors. Also, animists
generally seem less concerned with being a “good person” in the greater world
than with adhering to local ways and moral codes. This might involve one
village or even one household. An animist from Sumba expressed: “Following

THOUGHT AND RELIGION

31

custom, outside of the clan home and village there is no right and wrong.”2
This is not to say that animists necessarily abandon morality when away from
their home regions, but it does emphasize the centrality of clans, villages,
ancestors, and local nature spirits in their thought and behavior. In much
of eastern Indonesia, people live in what anthropologists have called “house
societies”3 where clan houses and their ancestral spirits are central cosmological forces in people’s lives—establishing their senses of place in the world and
a shared moral universe.4
In its most intense form, the locality of animist allegiances emerged in
headhunting societies, where people of a warrior’s home region considered
themselves fully human, while those outside were not. In basic ways, this is
little different from current groups and nations at war. Throughout history
the world over, people have dehumanized others to justify carrying out violent acts against them.
As noted of headhunting in Southeast Asia, “Manliness and bloodshed
are linked in the sexual politics of many societies” (including modern,
industrialized ones).5 In Indonesian regions, headhunting proved a young
man’s bravery, travel prowess, ferocity, and duty to his village or clan. It
also competitively demonstrated masculinity to women, who often goaded
men off to warfare and sang upon their return carrying the heads of enemies.
These human “trophies” proved a local victory and reinforced potency and
fertility beliefs and rituals. In warfare, headhunting accomplished the complete separation of an enemy from his being through an ultimate destruction
of selfhood. Many saw this as a way to keep the dead from ever reaching
their ancestral realm, because they could never be recognized without their
faces—the worst imaginable fate.
While now outlawed for many decades and currently practiced on symbolic
forms, such as coconuts, heads have been at the center of recent violence.
Crimes occasionally involve villagers taking the law into their own hands—
killing and then cutting off the head of a thief or murderer. This follows
old systems of punishment for violating customary law, or adat. In West
Sumba in 1998, a full-scale war erupted between two clans (during a period
of anarchy throughout Indonesia after the resignation of Suharto), leaving
many people decapitated.6 Indonesian soldiers and East Timorese ﬁghting on
their side displayed severed heads of local rebels ﬁghting for independence on
the end of riﬂe bayonets in East Timor, in the late 1990s. Thus, this violent
practice retains symbolic (and terrorizing) power in current times. Not all animists have carried out headhunting and certain groups across Indonesia converted to world faiths have continued to use decapitation against wrongdoers
and enemies.

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CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA

Indonesians are no more prone to violence than other people around the
world. In fact, in daily life, they generally may be less so following a social
emphasis on composure and balance. Still, as do other beliefs and customs,
ancient means of bloodshed sometimes resurface in current conﬂicts.
RELATIVE SOCIAL STATUS
Throughout most of Indonesia relative social status forms the base of
people’s ideas about society and correct behavior. Some languages contain
“high” and “low” levels of speech and people customarily behave deferentially
to seniors and those of higher social level. When an elder approaches a porch
to visit, younger people will shift their positions to a lower level to show respect. This especially holds true in Bali, but also occurs on many other islands.
The Indonesian national language (Bahasa Indonesia) does not contain the
extent of class-marking (i.e., “high” and “low”) ways of speech, as do some
local languages—especially Javanese. However, more polite, formal terms are
always used to superiors and people address adults by the terms Bapak or Pak
(for men) and Ibu or Bu (for women). These translate literally as “father” and
“mother,” but in Indonesia also mean “Mr.” or “Mrs.” Indonesians become
uncomfortable when asked by well-meaning Westerners to drop these formal
titles when talking to them, as they then feel disrespectful and unsure of their
relationship to those with whom they are speaking. Such formality confuses
Americans and Europeans, especially in casual situations.
Societies of the Indonesian Islands have never followed wholly democratic
systems but, rather, make decisions based in consensus or follow regional
leaders in matters of politics and voting. As democracy has never fully permeated most people’s thinking or aspirations, so with religions brought from
other lands. In modern political life, old class systems and ideas persist and
the same is true regarding the practice of world religions in the archipelago.
Relative status plays out in all social situations in Indonesia, in good part
determining etiquette, speech, and attitude.
WORLD RELIGIONS
People gradually adopted new religions (Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism,
Christianity) after the conversion of a regional head. Old belief systems persisted, however, and today even the most “modern” of Indonesian Christians,
Hindus, or Muslims incorporate ancient animist ideas and ritual elements
into their newer world faiths. Indonesians absorbed inﬂuences from India
and made them their own. Ancient Indian epics, such as the Ramayana and

THOUGHT AND RELIGION

33

the Mahabharata became localized and spread through Indonesian culture
through storytellers, dances, puppet shows, and visual artistry. These themes
elaborated through centuries and today the epics still inspire theatrics and arts
of all sorts, including ďŹ lms and soap operas. Indonesians love these ancient
Indian epics with a devotational quality, adapting them to become tales
within Indonesia. Characters of these mystical stories are moral examples and
their struggles exemplify those of humanity.
Most people of the nation follow Islam (roughly 90 percent), although
Christians are growing in number. Buddhism, which once dominated much
of Java and parts of Sumatra, now is a minor religion in Indonesia. Judaism is
largely unfamiliar to Indonesians in their own country. Hinduism is mostly
limited to Bali and western Lombok.
Hinduism

Hinduism evolved from early Indian philosophy, incorporating an
immensely complex body of literature, oral traditions, visual arts, sciences,
rituals, metaphysics, and social systems. The holy Mount Meru, a cosmological abode of gods and goddesses, centers Hindu religious focus. Hindus seek
to overcome desire and maintain harmony in their lives by following dharma,
or religious duty, which balances forces of order and disorder. Dharma applies
to diet, sex, thinking, desires, occupations, and social life. Following Hindu
thought, souls incarnate repeatedly as animals and humans (a chain of lifetimes called samsara) until they achieve a state of enlightenment, balance,
bliss, and purity called moksa. Conditions of each lifetime echo the deeds of
a soul in a previous one. People create karma through their right or wrong
actions and desires, according to Hindu dharma. Thus punishment or reward
becomes the basis of each incarnation. Hindus strive to maintain purity by
avoiding pollution, which can take form in thoughts, actions, foods, and
association with those of lower character or caste. This is but a basic deďŹ nition of an ancient, sophisticated, and dynamic system of belief. Hinduism
includes a vast range of principles, deities, rituals, and religious practitioners
too intricate to name here.
Hinduism spread to Indonesia from India around 100 a.d. As mentioned,
as local rulers adopted new religions, these diffused to surrounding populations. On the islands of Java and Sumatra, large empires developed with
Indian philosophies adapted to and mixed with local beliefs. Hinduism also
took hold in Bali through long, close links with Java, including intermarriage
between royal families. Bali kingdoms in ancient times, however, primarily
functioned independently from Java. Hinduism arrived on Baliâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shores from

34

CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA

India around the same time that it did on Java, as suggested in old Balinese
inscriptions dating from the late ninth century.
Today, Bali remains the only predominantly Hindu island in Indonesia.
Hinduism becomes especially complex in Bali, producing a riotously elaborate
religion, combining the enormous Indian Hindu pantheon of Gods and Goddesses with countless Balinese deities and spirits of earthly and supernatural
realms. Balinese follow a three-tiered caste system, but with far less severity
than do Indians. Firm believers in the laws of karma, Balinese hold that their
deeds will come back to haunt them or even cause them to reincarnate as an
animal in the next lifetime. Bali–Hindu is rife with ceremonies and rituals
and the religion is tenacious through modern times.
Hindu–Buddhism

Buddhism grew out of Hinduism, following the teachings of Gautama
Buddha in India in the sixth century b.c. Emphasizing the importance of
knowledge, moral thought, and controlling desire, Buddhists also aspire to
a state of perfect enlightenment and an end to reincarnations in this world.
Buddhism does not follow notions of social caste, but recognizes that some
people are more advanced than others on the path to spiritual enlightenment. Many Hindu principles such as karma and dharma carry on through
Buddhism. In Indonesia, people long combined ideas and deities of Hinduism
and Buddhism. Early Indonesian adaptations of these faiths are generally
referred to as Hindu–Buddhism. To the present, Balinese combine elements
of both religions.
Chinese records from the seventh century report a ﬂourishing, international community of Buddhists in the Sumatran kingdom of Srivijaya,
including Indians and Chinese, studying Buddhism with teachers from
India. Of course, the ruler of Srivijaya was a patron of Buddhism, inﬂuencing its spread to surrounding areas. The type of Buddhism adopted in
Indonesia was Mahayana (in contrast to Theravada Buddhism of Thailand).
It teaches that the way to heaven (Nirvana) is through practicing compassion in life and following spiritual practices like meditation. Many kings
adopted Hinduism or Buddhism to claim relations to divine powers
and strengthen their earthly authority. The Sailendra dynasty of central
Java began the world’s largest Buddhist temple, Borobudur, in the ninth
century. In early Indonesian kingdoms, Buddhism and Hinduism were
practiced alongside each other, with no evidence of conﬂict. In Javanese
courts of the fourteenth century Majapahit, Buddhist and Hindu senior
ministers held equal status.7

THOUGHT AND RELIGION

35

Through the Srivijaya period in Java and Sumatra, the demonstration
of Hindu–Buddhist devotion stimulated many arts, which developed great
reﬁnement. Poetry, theatrical performances, dance, the indigenous artistry of
batik textiles and other complex sorts of weaving, metalworking, and wood
and stone carving all reached extremely sophisticated levels that continue
to this day. These profoundly reﬂect Indonesians sensibilities and thought,
revealing how the past lives in the present. Many Indonesians today consider
their arts and cultures among the most reﬁned in the world. The term halus,
meaning reﬁned or polite, reﬂects a central value in Indonesian societies, as
opposed to kasar, meaning crude or vulgar. These terms apply to aesthetics
as well as social behavior, and echoe ancient Hindu–Buddhist teachings and
ideals. After the fall of the Srivijaya empire, Buddhism went into decline,
although perhaps as many as 2 million people still practice it in Indonesia.
Islam

Islam (meaning “surrender” in Arabic) holds that God’s ﬁnal revelation
was told in the seventh century to the Prophet Muhammad in Arabia, becoming the sacred Qur’an (Koran). Muslims follow ﬁve religious duties (called
pillars): acknowledging that there is one God (Allah) and that Muhammad is
his prophet; ritual prayer facing the Muslim holy city of Mecca at ﬁve speciﬁc
times each day; fasting during daylight hours for the month of Ramadan
to honor Muhammad receiving God’s revelations; making a pilgrimage to
the holy Arabian sites of Mecca and Medina during one’s lifetime; and paying taxes or alms to support religious leaders, travelers, and the poor. Islam
incorporates a vast system of religious doctrine, law, government, spiritual
leadership, pilgrimages, mosques, schools, dress, and other customs.
Although Indonesia is the largest predominantly Islamic nation in the world,
through its islands Islam surfaces in distinctly adapted forms with particular
historical backgrounds. When compared to Muslim ideology and practice
in parts of the Middle East, Indonesian Islam is moderate and tolerant. This
religion arrived through traders and missionaries from Arabia, China, and India,
beginning in Sumatra and Java and spreading through the archipelago by largely
peaceful means. Islam formed a connection between Arabia and China of a vast
and developed Muslim sea network.8 It attracted commoners early as it preached
equality in the eyes of God—a compelling alternative to the elitism and exclusiveness of the Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms, where rulers and priests enjoyed
relationships with the divine and others did not. Some Hindu and Buddhist
kingdoms exploited commoners wholly to construct lavish monuments
demanded by rulers. The most dramatic of these was Borobudur.

36

CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA

As Islam took hold in Java, it divided to suit three levels of society.
Commoners practiced abangan, an Islam blended with previous folk ideas
of healing, sorcery, and magic. The more afﬂuent merchant class adopted
the santri version of Islam, concerned with carrying out the basic rituals
of the faith, but also forming a complex of social, political, and charitable
Islamic societies. The third type of Islam practiced by the aristocratic class,
the priyayi, incorporated Hindu elements into the newer faith and carried on
a love of reﬁnement and mysticism.9 Islam became entrenched in Javanese
society through boarding schools for boys, called pesantren, headed by religious scholars and supported by Muslim taxes.
However, these distinctions apply to Java and Islam takes multiple forms
across Indonesia. As regions became Islamic, local systems of power and
patronage largely continued across the islands. Yet the vastness of Muslim
trade networks brought many regions into a wider world of goods, ideas, and
people.
Christianity

Christianity came to Indonesia largely through the Dutch, although the
earlier Portuguese had set up monasteries and convents in Timor and Flores
and converted many to Catholicism. Today, Flores and East Timor remain
largely Catholic. The Dutch set up a number of mission schools throughout
the archipelago during the colonial era, although these were mostly limited
to local elites. One scholar considers that certain elites converted to Dutch
Protestantism because it offered them an avenue to literacy—a skill they perceived as the source of the inexplicable technological and supernatural powers
for the invading Dutch.10 Thus, some of the nobility “converted,” following
an old inclination to form alliances with outside powers to maintain and
increase its own control. In this way, status and power provided impetus for
becoming Christian in some regions.
Most Indonesian Christians are Protestants, largely adapting the Dutch
Reformed Church to their societies. Indonesian Christians are often devout,
and many hold vigils during holy times of year like Easter. Most of the eastern Indonesian islands are Christianized, as well as parts of northern Sumatra
(mainly Batak areas) and Sulawesi (the Manado region and Torajaland).
Catholic missions exist on most sizeable islands. Indonesian Chinese tend to
follow Christianity, practicing all denominations.
In recent decades, Protestant evangelical churches have taken hold in
Indonesia, following missionaries from the United States. Unlike other world
faiths that permitted a synthesis of old and new ideas and practices, this recent
fundamentalist creed often denounces traditional ways. For instance, in some

THOUGHT AND RELIGION

37

congregations people are discouraged from wearing local dress and carrying out
rituals that are non-Christian, including dancing. Yet services in these churches
involve charismatic preachers, lively singing, and emotion; thus, they appeal to
some people more than the staid Dutch Protestant services. It remains to be
seen how this type of Christianity will evolve within Indonesian cultures.
ADAT
Imported religions take on distinctive combinations with customary laws—
called adat throughout Indonesia. To most Indonesians, adat maintains the
appropriate way of doing things, from religious ceremonies, to daily social
interactions, to marriage agreements, to law enforcement regarding crimes
such as theft or murder. It also signiﬁes indisputably correct ways of thought
and living established for centuries. Adat long has preceded inﬂuences such as
colonialism, world religions, Indonesian state laws, and new ideas and mores
of modern life. Through recent times of international media, tourism, and
increased education and mobility of Indonesians, adat provides cohesion
to life after centuries of impositions and disruptive changes. Veneration of
ancestors forms a basis of Indonesian belief and adat represents the proper
ways set down by those that came before. In this way, in village or urban
neighborhoods across the archipelago, people view adat as a time-tested,
civilized system that works. Religion and moral virtue throughout Indonesia
involve social obligations, etiquette, and rituals which then create and perpetuate harmony and order—living conditions valued above all else. Adat
provides a clear foundation for such conditions.
For example, the slametan ceremony given by many Muslims in Java sustains
community harmony while celebrating a family event. This is a communal
feast in response to any change in a family’s life: birth, death, circumcision,
illness, starting a new business, and so on:
The slametan is the Javanese version of what is perhaps the world’s most common
religious ritual, the communal feast, and, as almost everywhere, it symbolizes the
mystic and social unity of those participating in it. Friends, neighbors, fellow workers, relatives, local spirits, dead ancestors, and near-forgotten gods all get bound …
into a deﬁned social group pledged to mutual support and cooperation.11

Although the slametan appears to be an Islamic event, with appropriate
speakers reading from the Koran and people sitting in prayerful postures
with upturned hands, it echoes ancient pre-Islamic rituals held to sustain
group solidarity and protection against animistic evil spirits. Malign forces
might exist in animals, in parts of a yard, under rocks, near toilets, in rivers

or the sea, or just about anywhere. Often they carry a vivid historical basis:
Following a drowning, people might believe that an evil spirit plagues them
from a river, or a series of trafﬁc accidents could indicate a malevolent force
near a section of a road. Violation of adat principles or unruly behavior—such
as disrespect of parents—might attract spiritual retribution to the wrongdoer,
causing calamities such as physical accidents, loss of a job, illness, or mental
disorders. Ceremonies such as the slametan and the resulting offering of food,
however, appease such spirits. The slametan is an adat practice based in Java,
combining animistic and Islamic elements into a unique ritual event.
Ancestors and the Powers of the Dead

Belief in spiritual interventions manifests across Indonesia in many ways.
Scholars note that almost all Indonesians have a respect for deceased ancestors

THOUGHT AND RELIGION

39

and role models that to outsiders borders on the supernatural.12 Indeed, people
more often than not explain misfortune as supernaturally caused, in response
to human misdeeds, bad faith, or community failures to carry out proper
ceremonies—all provoking an upsetting of social and cosmological balance.
Such explanations especially follow illness or death of children, whom people
believe the ancestors especially affect.
On the island of Sumba in 2000, villagers interpreted the sudden,
inexplicable death of a healthy ten-year-old boy (while sleeping) as supernatural retribution for a ritually inadequate funeral for his grandmother held
weeks before. People commented that the quality of the textiles wrapping
the deceased were not up to standard and too few in number, and that this
“skimping” had angered her spirit.13 Spirits of the dead, when offended, will
then take a descendant among the living for retribution. Similarly, one notes
the importance of death rites in Bali:
There is a pervasive belief that no expense must be spared in this ﬁnal sendoff of the
soul, as any skimping would constitute disrespect. And since the soul will shortly
become a deiﬁed ancestor, with great power to help or hurt, a cheap funeral is a very
bad way to start off this relationship.14

Throughout Indonesia funeral rites and graves are extremely important. Bali
is generally the only island where people carry out cremations, following Hindu
tradition. Cremation ceremonies are as extravagant as a family can afford and
might include a decorated tower built over the deceased. In 2004 in Ubud,
Bali, a cremation event involved a tower that was 60 feet high. Festooned with
colorful cloth, gold ornaments, and paper, this supported a sarcophagus in the
form of a bull (constructed of wood, paper, and cloth). Many men bore planks
on their shoulders as they moved the tower to the cremation site.
Typically when transporting cremation towers, men swerve and take
indirect routes during processions to confuse any evil spirits that may be
lurking nearby. Large groups of people—dressed in their ﬁnest—join the
colorful march, adding to the display of family status. Men eventually bring
the funeral tower to a cremation site, where someone lights it on ﬁre. After a
fantastic display of sparks and ﬂames, the ﬁre engulfs and cremates the corpse
beneath. Ideally, the family will throw the ashes of the corpse into the sea,
after a high priest (called a pedanda) chants the last mantras (words used to
concentrate in meditation). After this there might be merriment throughout
the crowd, as the ﬁnal rites are ultimately happy events, freeing up the soul
of the deceased. Throughout much of the process of Balinese death rites,
people converse, laugh, eat, and behave as if at a kind of party. Dressed in
their best ﬁnery, many wear silken fabrics woven with gold or display golden

40

CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA

ornaments in their hair. These spectacular rituals have attracted many foreign
tourists, who often have been welcomed to join processions, provided they
comply with minimum standards of proper dressâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;which always includes a
sash around the waist. An observer summarizes:
A Balinese cremation is a dramatic event, but one that leaves many casual onlookers
puzzled. Where is the dead body? Why is everyone so happy? Why all the horseplay?
What kind of death rite is this after all? The cremation, as witnessed by most visitors, is
just one afternoon of weeks, sometimes months, of ceremonies and preparations. A Balinese cremation is a big event, and almost none of it has to do with the dead body.15

This emphasizes how Balinese consider the human body as a temporary and
impure shell that houses the soul while on earth. Balinese concentrate their
thoughts on the spirit and not the actual corpse at a death rite, and they consider the body as something that needs to be disposed, as quickly as possible.
Families, however, will sometimes bury a corpse until they have the means
for an elaborate funeral, and then dig it up later for the cremation ceremony.
Years may pass during this waiting period. The most crucial concern is that
the death ceremony be as splendid and ritually correct as possible. Poor families frequently ask permission to include their dead (with modest decoration)

along with a wealthy family’s ritual and procession, to save on costs. This
often happens. These are not sorrowful occasions, but times of great celebration believed to assist the departed soul in reaching heaven (suarga) or, in the
case of a highly developed soul, to a state of oneness with God (moksa).
Offerings are central to Balinese religious practice. At death rites, temporary structures ﬁll up with brightly colored, small sculptures of rice paste,
shaped as people, animals, boats, and so forth. Cakes, fruits, ﬂowers, eggs,
and meats of pig and duck add to the array. Perhaps 25 to 40 women will
work daily for several weeks making decorative offerings for an average-sized
cremation. These colorful and elegantly displayed creations function to honor
and please the ancestors and the spirit that will make its departure after cremation. Offerings also appease the hungry evil spirits of Bali, called bhutas
and kalas. If ignored, these spirits will cause trouble for the living or interfere
with the ceremony.
On other islands, burials involve extravagant ceremonies and sometimes
stone megaliths. The southern region of Indonesia, including Nias, Sumba,
and Timor, are part of a chain of islands regarded as a “megalithic arch.”
That is, people of these islands create large, stone grave markers (megaliths)
to honor their dead and assert prestige for living relatives.16 Chiseling stones
weighing many tons from a quarry and then dragging them some distance to
a burial site persists today in some areas.
In 1993, a megalith weighing 40 tons was dragged over mountainous
terrain in western Sumba for 3 miles, involving up to three thousand people
pulling in unison with ropes and rolling the stone over logs. This mammoth
community undertaking took place over 6 weeks sponsored by a high-ranking
family. Most of the money to ﬁnance the event came to the family from sons
working at professional jobs in Jakarta, more than 1,000 miles to the west of
Sumba. Beliefs and status associated with these megaliths remain strong in
parts of Indonesia, despite many outside inﬂuences and including educated
people who otherwise carry on modern lifestyles.
In Sumba, although many have converted to Christianity, perhaps half of
the population still carries out rituals of the indigenous Marapu (meaning
“our roots”) religion. This includes many converts who seem to combine the
faiths without difﬁculties. Sumbanese take funeral rituals most seriously and
villages on the island contain central yards with megalithic graves of all shapes
and sizes. The term Marapu also denotes the ancestors, and people forever
carry out ceremonies involving special priests using ritual speech and sacriﬁce
animals to stay in ancestral good graces. Divination—forecasting the future
or the auspiciousness of an undertaking—takes many forms in Sumba, from
drawing pictures to reading the entrails of pigs or chickens. People still regard
Marapu ideas and rituals most seriously. As a highly stratiﬁed society, with

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CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA

Dragging a hand-chiseled, 40-ton stone funeral megalith in West Sumba over 3 miles of
terrain. 1994. Courtesy of Jill Forshee.

castes of nobility, commoners, and slaves, Sumbanese are extremely conscious
of social position.
Nowhere in Indonesia do people carry out grander pageantry to honor the
dead than the Torajans of highland southern Sulawesi. People of the Tana
Toraja Regency occupy a mountainous area, geographically and culturally
distinct from the neighboring Muslim lowlands. As were people in Sumba,
Torajans remained isolated from colonialism until the twentieth century,
when Dutch missionaries converted some to Christianity. After the founding
of the Indonesian nation, they remained cloistered geographically through the
1960s, when their main visitors became tourists. Ironically, more Torajans
converted to Christianity after the departure of Dutch colonialism and the
following encouragement by Indonesian national policy to convert to a monotheistic faith.17 Toraja culture remained largely intact in 1968, at which time
half the population adhered to the ancestral religion, aluk to dolo (meaning
“ways of the ancestors”), while the other half adhered to Christianity.18
Torajans hold extravagant funeral rituals at which they slaughter many
water buffalo and stage processions and dances. As do funerals throughout Indonesia, these rituals honor the deceased and relations while making
public individual or family social status. In 1987, an anthropologist attended
a Torajan funeral and wrote: “The more guests a funeral attracts, the more

THOUGHT AND RELIGION

43

water buffalo are slaughtered and the more prestige accrues to the sponsors.
This particular funeral had been widely publicized: thirty thousand guests
were to attend, including three cabinet ministers, two governors, a foreign
ambassador, and van loads of tourists.”19
Although by recent estimates, more than 80 percent of the Toraja are
Christian converts, they continue to sponsor and partake in elaborate
funeral rituals replete with pig and water buffalo sacriﬁces.20 These costly
events might seem wasteful to outsiders, but to the people involved they
are of the highest priority in social life. Like Sumba, Toraja is a stratiﬁed
society, indeed following what could be called a caste system. People are
born into a certain caste level and remain there, regardless of what successes
they might have in life. As do people of Sumba, those of Toraja historically
belong to noble, commoner, or slave castes. To retain one’s higher caste
level has become even more crucial in modern times, within a nation that
expounds democracy and outlaws slavery. Thus Torajan elites have more at
stake than in the past, when they lived in relative isolation. The importance
of social status has become intensiﬁed throughout Indonesia in recent times,
in the face of modern changes. As summarized regarding the importance of
cockﬁghting in Bali (in 1958), “the cockﬁght talks most forcibly about …
status relationships, and what it says about them is that they are matters of
life and death.”21
WAYS OF LIFE, THOUGHT, AND BEHAVIOR
The village remains the basic home of less than half of the Indonesian
people. Yet even within cities such as Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Surabaya, or
Denpasar, areas often divide into small alleys (gangs) where kin and neighbors live in close quarters, recreating a village sociability and ambience. These
types of neighborhoods have suffered in recent decades through massive urban
renewal projects, succeeding in displacing many of the urban poor from their
modest living quarters. Many Indonesian city-dwellers also claim an outlying
village region as their true home, and some return for special ceremonies or
to help during harvest time.
Village political life typically centers around a ruling clan group or an
elected village head (kepala desa). People engage in a system of mutual assistance called gotong royong (meaning “mutual cooperation”), in which help or
goods received by a family eventually becomes returned in kind. “What goes
around comes around” aptly describes Indonesian ways of thinking about
sustaining communities. This may involve building a new house, contributing to a funeral, helping with a wedding, or a gift of fresh ﬁsh. Often
“debts” between villagers are not monetary, but rely upon physical assistance.

44

CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA

Maintaining a communal water system or building a new roof on a home
may involve the entire village and relations beyond.
In terms of rules and disputes, Indonesians strive to reach consensus in
making decisions. Often meetings, called musyawarah, take place among
relatives or neighbors for decisions on marriages, funerals, agricultural
matters, trade obligations, crimes, or to settle disagreements. A resolution
follows (ideally) when all present reach agreement rather than merely sharing
a majority opinion.
Indonesians value a peaceful social order and strive for balance in their
relationships and activities (when order is lost, mayhem can take over, and
the earlier section on history in Chapter 1 demonstrated how this has happened). People rarely openly disagree or argue with each other face-to-face.
To Westerners they might seem indecisive or evasive in the ways they do not
respond to questions with “yes” or “no” answers but, rather, with “maybe”
or “not yet.” Indonesian etiquette involves a formal politeness to others that
requires deference. Behaving with too much certainty might appear aggressive. Kin and elders enjoy respect and people carry on their lives through
complex systems of family obligations. To be blatantly individualistic is
considered egotistical (egois) and childishly selﬁsh and the extent of honor
and consideration Indonesians give to others often surprises foreigners.
To be alone for any length of time is an aberration in Indonesia. Young
and old prefer the company of family and friends. Sometimes Indonesians
strike Westerners as intrusive, clinging, and knowing no sense of privacy.
This is because they often belong to large extended families living in close
quarters and are accustomed to the constant company of others. In fact,
Indonesians generally relish close contact with family and friends. Many
people will express that they feel isolated (sepi) when by themselves. When
venturing out to market or a late day stroll, Indonesians usually go with one
or several companions.
Gendered Behaviors

Western observers of Indonesia noted in the past the relatively high status
enjoyed by women, who sell goods at the market place and are visible, active,
and vocal in home life and beyond. Although usually men dominate public
and ritual events, women largely set the tone for domestic life and handle the
ﬁnances. Yet, ofﬁcially sanctioned, traditional roles for women in Indonesia
particularly emphasize a role of wife and mother. President Suharto, after
his rise to power in the mid-1960s, stated that women’s organizations in
Indonesia should bring women to their correct role, as the mother of a

THOUGHT AND RELIGION

45

household and the motor for development.22 Women’s roles and status vary
throughout Indonesian societies. They have become educated, outspoken,
and have entered all sorts of professions in recent decades.
To many Indonesians of all faiths, everything possesses a soul. Moreover,
human souls succumb to evil forces, to physical traumas, or to sudden shocks.
One such consequence is called latah, which befalls women who have been
startled, sometimes by something as simple as an abrupt loud noise. This
causes a severe nervous condition where women react to the surprise by
behaving irrationally, by using uncharacteristically foul language, or by falling to the ground in a kind of ﬁt. People explain that latah results from the
soul leaving the body through sudden fright. Local healers or priests will then
call back a woman’s soul and cure her of the afﬂiction.
Amok is another psychological phenomenon that strikes Indonesians. Most
Americans have heard the expression, “running amok” (or amuk) without
knowing its Indonesian origins. This seems to largely affect men and typically occurs in Indonesian societies that encourage emotional restraint, such
as in Java or Bali. To run amok is to rage violently, striking out at anything
nearby. Someone in this state has lost all control and acts out with madness.
People will eventually subdue the person, who will usually not bear the blame
for his behavior, unless he has caused injury or death. Reasons of job stress,
recent loss, pent up anger, a grievous insult, and so forth, often explain the
afﬂiction. Amok occurs from a serious loss of personal balance and highlights
how harmony prevents chaos and frenzy. This might occur on an individual
or collective level, as during historical collapses of order in Indonesia.
Living with the Natural and Supernatural

Many Indonesians believe that there are dangers everywhere, visible and
invisible. Balinese will eat food quickly and in silence, fearing risks in the
prolonged opening of their mouths, inviting the possible entry of evil forces.
In Sumba and other parts of Indonesia, people dread nocturnal spirits called
suangi. Sumba villagers keep lamps lit all night to prevent these spirits of the
dark from entering their rooms and preying upon them while they sleep.
Suangi, they say, will feed upon human organs or, like vampires, suck blood
from sleeping people and thus strengthen their own powers. Frequently,
people who fall ill or weakened for a length of time will suspect such a spirit
has attacked them in their sleep. Sometimes they also regard living individuals as suangis and avoid contact with them. One anthropologist received constant warnings in Sumba to never go out at night and to always keep a lamp
lit in her room.23 Moreover, a person alone attracts such spirits so it is best

46

CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA

to live in a household with others. People often fear empty houses and even
consider them as haunted. Only the presence of humans and social order
makes spaces safe.
Across the island of Timor (including now independent East Timor), sacred
sites provide spiritual meaning to the landscape—on mountaintops, among
rock outcroppings, in forests, and so forth. These contain lulik (meaning
“sacred” and also “forbidden”) wooden carvings, often posts or ﬁgures, which
people of the region traditionally have considered protective and beneﬁcial.24
These are secret places, visited by elders and animist priests. Sometimes the
carvings are very old. In recent times, some of these objects have been stolen
and sold into the world market of ethnic arts. In one region of East Timor, a
lulik ﬁgure in the form of a wooden angel disappeared from a mountaintop in
the 1950s. People of the region report that after this loss, their region was not
as prosperous as before.25 In his autobiography, Xanana Gusmão, the current
president of the nation of East Timor, reports that in the days when he was
a resistance ﬁghter against the Indonesian army, he went to lulik sites in the
mountains to renew his strength.26
Animism accounts for many helpful earthly and ancestral spirits and even
national leaders sometimes appeal to them. These spirits provide life and its
blessings or assist in times of crisis. Following beliefs throughout rice-growing
areas of Indonesia, spirits abide in the plants. In Bali, the rice goddess, Dewi
Sri, commands immense respect. When harvesting rice, women use a small,
crescent-shaped blade concealable in the palms of their hands. This is to avoid
frightening rice sheafs by the sight of the knives in their harvesting. Similar
means of cutting rice at harvest take place across other Indonesian islands.
After the “Green Revolution” in parts of Indonesia, fostered by Western
rice hybrids and chemical fertilizers and pesticides, many Balinese (who had
been brilliant rice-growers for centuries) became distraught at the environmental consequences. Although harvests were more frequent and abundant,
and certain pests were at bay, other creatures of the rice paddy eco-system (and
sources of food), such as minnows, shrimp, and frogs, died from the chemicals. Ducks, an important part of fertilization and pest control in paddies to
this day, became irrelevant to the rice ﬁelds or sick from the new chemicals.
Moreover, people said that the rice did not taste as good as the type they had
always grown. Some formerly unknown diseases began to attack crops in Bali
and Java. Some Indonesians claimed that Dewi Sri and spirits were upset by
these modern “developments.”
At one point, then-President Suharto outlawed some of the more toxic
pesticides, in response to concerns of offense to the rice goddess. Suharto,
a Muslim, was also a life long adherent to Javanese mysticism, including

THOUGHT AND RELIGION

47

its gods, goddesses, and spirits. He was a striking example of how animistic
beliefs underlie and persist through Indonesian thought—even that of modern, high-ranking political leaders (President Wahid visited the grave of a
long-dead spiritual leader before making political decisions). Now some
people have resumed growing rice through traditional, largely organic methods, particularly in Bali where the grain holds a central nutritional, social, and
cosmological place in life.
Recent Challenges to Indonesian Thought, Religion, and Order

As mentioned in Chapter 1, the terrorist bombing of the Bali nightclub on
October 12, 2002 created upheaval in Indonesia, not only through the lives it
took and ruined, but also in the effects it had upon the way many Indonesian
people thought about their worlds. In Bali, many Hindus believed that they
had grown too commerce oriented in their involvement with tourism and
had thus neglected the sacred. Muslims were dismayed and confused as to
why the Islamic fundamentalist group Jemaah Islamiyah (meaning Islamic
Community)27 claiming responsibility would take the lives of Indonesians
(including other Muslims) and all but destroy the livelihoods of many of all
faiths in Bali.
The massive tsunami destroying Aceh on December 25, 2004, in the
northern region of Sumatra, also signiﬁed to many either discontent within
their metaphysical worlds and faulty religious practice, or the weakening
and even immorality of the national government of Indonesia—another
geological disaster heralding the wrongs of the powers that be. The catastrophe provided an earthly and supernatural message that the ethical bases
of religion of Indonesian peoples have been violated—whether by ordinary
citizens or political leaders. Such times have caused introspection, anger,
confusion, further violence, and tremendous sorrows for those affected. Most
appeal to higher powers for help. Many Indonesians blamed political corruption (korupsi)—a system so entwined with power, especially regarding the
national government, that most consider it as the main attribute of those who
rule over them and the cause of their woes. The earthquakes and tsunami in
Java in May and July 2006 have caused many to again lose conﬁdence in their
leaders.
Further terrorist bombings in Jakarta, such as that of August 2003 (killing 12
people) at the Marriot Hotel and that of September 2004, killing 11 people at
the Australian Embassy have escalated the terrorism and caused many foreigners to stay away from Indonesia altogether. But the October 2005 bombing,
once again in the tourist section of Bali, physically and emotionally devastated

48

CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA

people who were just beginning to believe that their lives had returned to
normal. Thus far, there have been no reprisals against Muslims and, indeed,
the many Muslims doing business in Bali have suffered equally.
Indonesians now must struggle with their religious diversity and a
minority of people prone to terrorism and violence (which includes Muslims,
Christians, and animists), threatening the stability of their lives, communities, and nation. Terrorism, as throughout the world, will likely continue, as
peoples of the archipelago strive for peace and order. Indonesians live with a
multiplicity of moral standards and now juggle social and religious systems that
shift between a nationally promoted ideal of monotheistic religion (recognized
as agama, which differs from older beliefs of adat) and local, customary ideas
of the right ordering of the world. As always, this “right ordering” will take
account of natural and human-inﬂicted disasters, as people try to ﬁnd ways
to balance the many forces—both earthly and metaphysical—affecting their
lives.
NOTES
1. See Margaret J. Wiener, Visible and Invisible Realms: Power, Magic, and Colonial
Conquest in Bali (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
2. Told to Jill Forshee by a young man in Sumba in 1998.
3. Claude Levi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship (Boston: Beacon Press,
1969).
4. See Jill Forshee, Between the Folds: Stories of Cloth, Lives, and Travels from Sumba
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000), 17–19.
5. Janet Hoskins, “Introduction: Headhunting as Practice and Trope,” in Headhunting
and the Social Imagination in Southeast Asia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 20.
6. This warfare has been described at length by David Mitchell, “Tragedy in Sumba:
Why Neighbors Hacked Each Other to Death in a Remote Part of Indonesia,” Inside Indonesia 58 (1998): 8–20. See also Jacqueline Vel, “Tribal Battle in a Remote Island: Crisis and
Violence in Sumba (Eastern Indonesia),” Indonesia 72 (2001): 141–158.
7. James J. Fox, ed., Religion and Ritual, Indonesian Heritage Series (Singapore: Archipelago
Press, 1999), 50, paraphrased.
8. See Jean Gelman Taylor, Indonesia: People and Histories (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2003), 60–87.
9. Clifford Geertz, The Religion of Java (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1960), 5–7.
10. See Janet Hoskins, “Entering the Bitter House: Spirit Worship and Conversion in
West Sumba,” in Indonesian Religions in Transition, Rita Kipp Smith and Susan Rodgers, eds.
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1987), 136–160. Also discussed in Forshee, 19–21.
11. Geertz, The Religion of Java, 11.
12. See Henri Chambert-Loir and Anthony Reid. “Introduction,” in The Potent Dead
Ancestors, Saints, and Heroes in Contemporary Indonesia, ed. Henri Chambert-Loir and Anthony
Reid (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press in association with Allen and Unwin, Australia,
2002), xv–xxvi.

THOUGHT AND RELIGION

49

13. This was Jill Forshee’s (2001) personal observation and conclusion through discussions
with a number of people in the family and village.
14. Fred B. Eiseman, Jr., Bali: Sekala and Niskala. Volume I: Essays on Religion, Ritual, and
Art (Hong Kong: Periplus Press, 1990), 116.
15. Eiseman, Bali, 115.
16. This arch actually sweeps around half of the globe, from the island of Madagascar off
the east coast of Africa, through Indonesia and across the Paciﬁc Ocean to Easter Island—
the site of immense and mysterious stone heads. Originally, the Austronesian peoples spread
megalithic culture across this vast region.
17. This is mentioned in Chapter 1 as one of the ﬁve founding principles of Pancasila set
out by President Sukarno.
18. Eric Crystal, “Rape of the Ancestors: Discovery, Display, and Destruction of the
Ancestral Statuary of Tana Toraja,” in Fragile Traditions: Indonesian Art in Jeopardy (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1994), 30.
19. Kathleen Adams, “Taming Traditions: Torajan Ethnicity in the Age of Tourism,” in
Converging Interests: Traders, Travelers, and Tourists in Southeast Asia, ed. Jill Forshee, with
Christina Fink and Sandra Cate (Berkeley: Center for Southeast Asia Studies, Monograph No.
36, University of California at Berkeley, 1999), 253.
20. Adams, “Taming Traditions,” 252.
21. Geertz, Clifford, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockﬁght,” in The Interpretation
of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 447.
22. Sylvia Tiwon discusses Suharto’s stand toward the position of women in New Order
Indonesia in “Models and Maniacs: Articulating the Female in Indonesia,” in Fantasizing the
Feminine in Indonesia, ed. Laurie J. Sears (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 59.
23. Jill Forshee, personal observation.
24. For a fuller ethnographic description of the region and beliefs, see Elizabeth Traube,
Cosmology and Social Life: Ritual Exchange Among the Mambai of East Timor (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1986).
25. See Jill Forshee, “Tracing Troubled Times: Objects of Value and Narratives of Loss
from Sumba and Timor Islands,” Indonesia 74 (2002): 65–77.
26. See Xanana Gusmão, To Resist Is to Win: The Autobiography of Xanana Gusmão
(Victoria, Australia: Aurora Books, 2000).
27. In the early 1970s, Muslim youths hostile to the religious repression of Suharto’s New
Order regime started supporting local Muslim groups, and the diverse band of believers became
collectively known as Jemaah Islamiyah, which literally means “Islamic Community.” These
small groups agreed to live by Islamic law and were blamed for arson attacks on churches,
nightclubs and cinemas. Quoted from Bill Guernin, “Indonesia’s Terror Dilemma,” Online
Asia Times, October 7, 2005, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/GJ07Ae01.
html.

3
Literature and Art
Indonesian visual arts long have graced international museum exhibitions,
stunning onlookers with their beauty, uniqueness, and complexity. These
include carving, weaving, drawing, and painting—and encompass puppetry,
masks, temple art, and modern, eclectic forms of artistic expression. Currently, as Indonesian artists produce ingenious works with extraordinary
standards of excellence, international institutions and collectors avidly seek
them out. Today, Indonesians exhibit their arts at galleries in Paris, New
York, London, Tokyo, Sydney, and cosmopolitan centers the world over.
The concept of halus (reﬁnement) persists through Indonesia’s arts and
literature, reﬂecting many centuries of exquisite works evoking a moral rightness. Terms for “beauty” in Indonesian societies (in both the Indonesian
national and many local languages) often also mean “goodness,” as does halus
and also the word bagus (meaning “beautiful” or “good”). The reverse is also
true—the term for “ugliness” in Indonesian is jelek, also denoting “bad” or
“evil.” Kasar (“crude”) also describes a low moral character. Through its history, visual art and literature in Indonesia represent both the light and dark
sides of life and cosmological order. These creative forms embody balance
while permitting ambiguities and complexities in expressions and interpretations.
Modern Indonesian art and literature do not necessarily focus upon the
beautiful as their subject matters, but frequently paint, carve, or write of life’s
hardness, inequities, and sorrows. In recent decades, such expressions became
powerful media for political criticism. For decades, authors and artists critical
of the national government faced imprisonment, most drastically during the
Suharto New Order regime.

52

CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA

Art and literature implicate values and social realities beyond the written
story or painted picture. Like other aspects of Indonesian life and thought:
such as relative social status, spiritual beliefs, balance, etiquette, and gender,
expressive culture cannot be separated out as a category by itself. Rather, creative media entwines with all elements of cultures of the archipelago. Adopting a holistic approach eventually reveals patterns toward understanding
something of cultures and customs of Indonesia.
VISUAL ARTS
Premodern Indonesian Visual Arts
The classical Indianized art of Java is possibly the greatest art produced by any peoples of Southeast Asia. … It represents an intimate blending of religious and artistic
aims and methods, achieved by the native genius of the peoples of Indonesia.1

Before Indian or other foreign inﬂuences, indigenous artistry and skill
ﬂourished across the Indonesian islands longer than anyone knows. Certain
early imported designs, studied by international and Indonesian art scholars
and archaeologists, appear to have spread to the Indonesian archipelago at
around three to four centuries b.c. from the Dong Son culture of what is now
Vietnam. Whether by migrations, diffusions, or trade, ornate metal axes and
round, bronze ornamental kettledrums typical of Dong Son made their ways
to Indonesian islands. One such drum, called the “Moon of Bali” (between
one and two thousand years old) exempliﬁes an elaborately decorated piece
and the largest of its kind ever found. Stylized faces and much ornamentation embellish the drum. Some argue that this drum (and others like it) was
produced locally. People of the island of Alor (near Timor) continue to prize
and use similar, smaller drums called moko.
Scholars now recognize that while Indonesian islands absorbed inﬂuences
from mainland Southeast Asia, India, China, Arabia, Europe, and beyond—
much local skill, inventiveness, and artistry developed independently. Today,
anyone observing Indonesians carving, weaving, working with clay, metalworking, drawing, painting—or creating offerings of sculpted rice paste—will note
the meticulousness of the artists and their superb senses of design and detail.
Arts of Indonesia generally involve a highly organized horizontal and
vertical schematic design, which then contains complex patterns. As an art
historian summarized: “Throughout even the most complex pattern, an
ordered regularity, a balance, between horizontal and vertical prevails.”2
This visually mirrors cultural emphases upon balance and order prevailing
through life.

LITERATURE AND ART

53

Indian artistic inﬂuences had taken hold in parts of Indonesia by the third
century a.d., following centuries of trade and immigrated Indians. The early
Sumatran kingdom of Srivijaya and the Javanese kingdom of Majapahit
absorbed and reconﬁgured Indian ideas and aesthetics, which then powerfully
inﬂuenced the arts of Indonesia. Many reasons explain the historical openness
among people and rulers of Indonesia to Indian principles. Buddhism and
Hinduism came from India, bringing a highly developed religious and aesthetic
heritage. Indian learning offered Indonesians a written script, an administrative
system, codes of law, politics, metaphysics, mathematics, astronomy, medicine,
and practical magic. Multiple rulers derived inspiration, prestige, and practical assistance from these systems. Their assimilation of Indian ideology and
aesthetics became a major factor in the success of dynasties that later erected the
great stone monuments of central and eastern Java.3
Further, the sinuousness and sensuality of Indian arts clearly appealed
to Indonesian aesthetic sensibilities. Early Indian-inﬂuenced artistry (and
Indonesian arts to the present) was rich in curves, detail, and ﬂourish. The
intricacy and elegance of the bas-relief stone panels on Javanese monuments
reveal the advanced carving skills and sophisticated design senses of artisans
of the times.

A carved stone panel of Borobudur, central Java, illustrating one story of Buddha’s many
incarnations on earth. Courtesy of Jill Forshee.

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CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA

Hundreds of these panels and freestanding, three-dimensional stone ﬁgures embellish one of the most impressive monuments ever created anywhere
in the world—Borobudur in central Java. The carved reliefs along the path
to the temple summit illustrate early stories of Buddha’s incarnations on
earth, called Jataka tales. The monument also includes depictions of heaven
(nirvana) and hell (neraka). While these artistic representations come from
Buddhist literature brought from India, Borobudur embodies the doctrines
of Buddhism as adopted in Java, beautifully rendered pictorially—illustrating
rights and wrongs of life and ideals of religion. Now refurbished, Borobudur
is a major tourist and pilgrimage site, a largely open-air museum of ancient
stone artistry and architectural magniﬁcence.
Puppets

One art form is so popular in parts of Indonesia (especially in Bali and
Java) and so magniﬁcently exempliﬁes indigenous artistry, storytelling, cultural values, and performative skill that it often appears on book covers and
travel brochures as a kind of “emblem” for the country. The ﬂat, leather
puppets called wayang kulit (meaning “leather puppet”) represent many
characters, animals, and natural forms as both a visual and performing art.
Through fantastic imagery and a mystical theatrical ambience, wayang performances transport audiences to other worlds—whether of a glorious past
or a godly realm. These puppets enact all-night dramas behind a stretched
white cloth screen, backlit with a hanging oil lamp. Seated on the other side
of the screen, the audience sees only the shadows of the puppets—thus wayang kulit is called “the shadow play.”
Although people view the wayang in performance as shadows, puppets
receive colorful and meticulously painted details and often gold highlights.
This renders them attractive as they are, but the colors usually do not appear
through the screen to an audience. Carvers produce the puppets with special
knives and chisels, using master stencils. The leather characters contain rich,
lacy detail in the empty spaces carved through them: meanders, curves, eyes,
mouths, patterns on clothing and hair, and small holes of various shapes or
slits to deﬁne sections of each form. This demands great care and skill and
each puppet requires highly speciﬁc facial features, body type, hairstyle, clothing, jewelry, and so forth, which must be clearly visible in shadow form.
Thus, while often beautifully painted, the exquisite quality of the carving
enables the puppets to carry the show. When ﬁnished, leather puppets become
mounted on bamboo or bone rods running spine-like up their centers for
support and serving as handles for the dalang to hold from beneath. The same

LITERATURE AND ART

55

The dalang as a one-man theatre, reenacts ancient epics such
as the Ramayana and Mahabarata, without pause from dusk
to dawn, manipulating scores of shadow puppet characters and
speaking in many voices and dialects. American Society for
Eastern Arts. Courtesy of David Weitzman.

material forms rods to manipulate moveable parts of the characters, such as
arms, legs, or opening jaws. Puppet making skill in Indonesia often passes
down through families, as do many arts. Typically a master crafter creates
the most intricate sections of a character and younger family members learn
gradually through producing simpler parts of puppets.
The most reﬁned puppets feature black, white, or yellow faces, while those
of coarser manner wear red or pink-faces, with various shades from either
extreme group coloring characters in between. A large stature symbolizes
great physical strength and a violent nature or lack of self-control. This is
in contrast to well-proportioned, medium-sized ﬁgures that do possess selfcontrol and ﬁnesse. A slim, small body is indicative of reﬁnement.4
Other popular types of puppets include ﬂat, wooden puppets from eastern
Java, called wayang klitik, and wooden, doll-like puppets from western Java,
called wayang golek. All types include hinged, wooden arms attached to

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CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA

rods; however, the three-dimensional wayang golek puppets do not appear in
shadow plays, but as they are—colorfully painted with specially sewn clothing of a variety of fabrics. These enact similar tales as do shadow puppets,
with regional variations and modern innovations.
Some puppeteers take their characters to the streets, with mini-theaters
pushed on carts. These are not the elite dalang puppet masters of renown,
but common people trying to make a living through their arts and imaginations. The cover of an issue of the sophisticated Indonesian magazine
Latitudes, published in Bali in English, features an engaging photograph of a
one-toothed, old Javanese man with a small stage on a cart (made from an old
bicycle) framing simply painted, three-dimensional puppets. The puppeteer
in the picture smiles proudly behind his modest yet colorful mobile theater.5
Masks

Perhaps of all Indonesian arts, masks embody the greatest power for transformation of people and dramatic characters. Called topeng in the Indonesian
language, masks of all sorts animate dance dramas, festivals, and rituals—
assisting in offerings and personifying good and evil. In some regions, men
have donned masks in battle, and healers have worn them in rituals for
the sick. Highly skilled carvers and painters create the best masks used in
momentous events. Sacred pieces in some regions (such as Bali and Timor)
require special trees for their wood.
As remarked of Balinese arts: “images most important in the political and
social organization of Bali in one era did not simply die out, but new images
were added to them, so that each generation saw itself as continuing the
same culture, while at the same time transforming it.”6 This is true of most
Indonesian arts, which all chronicle events and inﬂuences of their times and
change as time goes on.
While masks of Bali are among the most extravagantly constructed, those
of other Indonesian islands are also ﬁnely made and ritually important. The
Toba Batak people of northern Sumatra have worn large, simply carved
wooden masks at funeral rituals and the neighboring Karo people wore large
helmet-like masks of wood representing either people or horses. Traveling medicine men of Sumatra wear simple wooden masks to advertise their
healing powers as they sit behind their wares at open markets. The wood of
the masks emulates the magical powers of the herbs and barks the healers sell
and use.
Dramatic and complex, masks of the Dayak people in regions of Kalimantan
portray animist spirits and earthly creatures. Some bear elaborate extensions

LITERATURE AND ART

57

and resemble those of northwest coast indigenous peoples of North America.
Dayak masks portray pigs, deer, tigers, dragons, and people. Men wear them
at important times of year during rice planting or harvesting, sometimes as
they dance within the community longhouses for which Dayak are famous.
Some say that gods descend from the mountains and enter the men to help
attract rice spirits that will bestow fertility upon the crops and that these
earthly masks serve as a sort of disguise against any malevolent forces.7
Masks of Timor Island are simply carved of wood, then darkened with
soot. People say that warriors or local priests wore them in dances. These
masks differ greatly from the ﬁnely detailed ones of Bali and Java and express
creatures and concepts of animist cultures of eastern Indonesia. Arts of this
region sharply contrast with those of the more Indian-inﬂuenced areas of
central and western Indonesia. Sometimes Timor masks derive their shapes
from certain pieces of wood, and the tangled roots of a tree might become the
“hair” of a mask. People believe that these objects receive their powers from
particular trees and places, in keeping with local spirits of nature.
Temple Painting

Illustrating sacred tales, people historically created paintings on large cloths,
and then hung these on walls and eaves of temple pavilions.8 Figures in these
paintings appear in standard three-quarters view, as do shadow puppets. Bali
is famed for such paintings, especially near the Klungkung region (an old
kingdom). Balinese tend to ﬁll all of the space in a picture with imagery. In
temple pieces, otherwise empty spaces teem with birds, vegetation, or water
drops to portray an atmosphere full of vibrancy. Moreover, large paintings
often contain sequential episodes of a long story, each deﬁned by a highly
decorative border. This lends the scenes a comic strip-like appearance. In
fact, they similarly tell stories through a succession of pictorial frames, some
including written script in ancient Balinese.
As do many arts of Bali and Java, temple paintings frequently portray
images from revered Indian epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.9
These paintings use little “perspective” to suggest space, instead composing
everything at the same distance from the viewer; all forms occupy the same
plane. Other paintings depict tales of royal pageantry; some tell of warfare, or
even kasar (coarse) commoners celebrating together.10 Elaborate, decorative,
and repetitious, these paintings draw viewers into their details and stories.
The Kertha Gosa (Palace of Justice) is ﬁlled with paintings, built in the
early eighteenth century at Klungkung, Bali (a region also renowned for
modern paintings). These lavish pictures decorate the entire sectioned ceiling

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CULTURE AND CUSTOMS OF INDONESIA

Balinese temple painting depicting a scene of hell. Courtesy of Joseph Fischer. Used by
permission.

of this pavilion, numbering 267 panels. The paintings vividly reﬂected an
aesthetic penchant for artistic precision, opulence, and excellence throughout
Bali during this era.11
Modern Indonesian Art

An art scholar from Java considers that “Modern Indonesian visual art was
born in a rush and then developed quickly without following any prolonged
or traditional natural course. Its birth was a product of strong Western inﬂuences and its character for a long time was conditioned by this circumstance.”12
While true to a great degree regarding initial factors bringing “modern art”
to Indonesians, this statement seems too dismissive of indigenous artistry and
ideas. In any case, it does not sufﬁciently credit Indonesian artists of the time,
who adopted new forms but continued to develop their own subjects and
styles, thus making their marks in various art worlds. As Indonesians took on
Western concepts in their art, they did not routinely abandon their intrinsic
artistic sensibilities and subject matters, much less their creativity.
The modern art movement in Java and Sumatra largely came out of
study clubs in the early twentieth century, in which elite Indonesians grew
acquainted with foreign art and literature. Following this, “the future
Indonesians became aware of Western art history, and suddenly ‘painter’ became

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59

a new career-option, an option with a certain modern, international aura—a
new category which it would be up to the Indonesian artists to interpret
according to their own ideas and needs.”13 Through the 1920s and 1930s,
Indonesian painters increasingly took part in shaping contemporary culture,
mixing the international with their own and the modern with the traditional,
“into a series of individual syntheses which could not have happened anywhere else.” Indeed, Indonesians contributed much to a “global history of
contemporary art” no longer centered in the Western world.14
In the early twentieth century, Bali experienced an exhilarating, revolutionary period of artistic transition to Western-style framed and individualized
drawings and paintings—and stylized wood carvings of nonreligious themes.
In the 1930s, a community of Western artists resided in Bali. Some provided Balinese artists with paper, pencils, paints, canvases, frames, brushes,
and other imported art materials. They also instructed them in Western art
techniques and themes, such as linear perspective, modern artistic styles, and
scenes of everyday life. Accordingly, for some Balinese, visual subject matter
moved from the sacred spheres of the gods to the ordinary realm of the living,
and artists began to draw, paint, and carve such imagery with fervor. They
also began to sign their work, thus individualizing art.
In the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, few tourists visited Bali, but enough
went (as did visiting friends of resident foreign artists and celebrities, such
as Charlie Chaplin) that a growing market developed for Balinese “village

Painting of village life in Bali, 1933, by I. Reneh, Batuan. Courtesy of Joseph Fischer. Used
by permission.

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life” painting that continues to this day. Anthropologists Margaret Mead and
Gregory Bateson researched in Bali during this time and collected paintings of
the period, many of which they commissioned.15 Such patronage, encouraged
Bali artists to develop individual styles and themes. Older subjects continued
in popularity, however, as the Balinese began to portray just about everything
in their real and imaginary worlds in framed pictures.
Artists in Java, inﬂuenced by colonialism, Dutch education, European art
books, tourism, and so forth, had also begun to create nontraditional art.
As noted, “Up to about 1920 this art largely consisted of landscape painting, still life and portraiture … a break from traditional artisanship and a
precursor of a new art movement.”16 In the 1920s, led mainly by the artist
Soedjojono, artists in Java broke radically with conventions and progressed
to address themes of social realism. These included now famous artists such
as the painter Affandi.
Following World War II, such artists, along with a new generation, continued to express their sentiments toward colonialism, Japanese wartime
occupation of Indonesia, and a national revolution resulting in independence from the Dutch. They did not paint pretty pictures of the idyllic
tropics, but depicted horrors and sorrows of recent Indonesian life. During
the national independence struggle from the Dutch, many artists were involved in the battleﬁelds, which emerged in their later artwork.17 Revolutionary themes appeared well before independence in paintings by Affandi,
Soedjojono, and others—passionately striving to portray what was truly
Indonesian. Simultaneously, in the region of Ubud, Bali, the artist Gusti
Nyoman Lempad began drawing and painting scenes dignifying everyday
Balinese life, such as women preparing food in kitchens or people working
in yards.
The birth of modern painting in Indonesia coincided with the birth of
the nationalist movement,18 and the portrayal of ordinary Indonesians—as
typical Indonesian labor and activities became themes with a revolutionary
message. Such portrayals continued into the new era, as artists conveyed
the poverty and social inequities under the Sukarno and Suharto regimes.
However, scenes of lives of commoners or anything suggesting poverty
became increasingly associated with Communist afﬁliations and antigovernment intentions. Some, such as the painter Hendra Gunawan,
imprisoned during the Suharto reign in the 1960s for his subversive
political ideas, suffered particular government censure for the socially
controversial subjects of his paintings, which included scenes of street
prostitutes.19 Prison, however, for artists and writers, profoundly strengthened their ideas and political resolve. This enriched modern Indonesian
art and literature with a passion and social and historical consciousness
that came to deﬁne it worldwide.

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A village scene attributed to Javanese artist Kartika Affandi. Courtesy of Jill Forshee.

In the 1950s, Hendra moved to Yogyakarta, Java, where he joined a newly
formed group, Young painters of Indonesia, headed by Soedjojono (the early
leader in advocating modern art true to Indonesian realities). Later he joined
painters Affandi and others in the group People’s Painters and with his wife
set up a sort of ashram where artists could stay, and even enabled some to
study for free. This drew many painters to the city. Yogyakarta also had created an institution called ASRI, The Yogyakarta Academy of Art. Because of
this school and the many artists living in Yogyakarta, there developed a lively
arts community in a section of the city near ASRI and the home of Hendra,
hosting creative people and events.20 Affandi’s daughter, Kartika, eventually
gained acclaim as a contemporary painter with deep Javanese sensibilities.
By the mid-1980s, artistic communities and schools were thriving in
Jakarta, Bandung, Bali, and Yogyakarta. The creative neighborhood in
Yogyakarta had taken on an international bohemian atmosphere where
numerous artists lived humbly and worked, exhibiting their pieces at various
places. By the late 1980s, the art scene was increasingly centered upon a small,
sophisticated venue called the Cemeti Gallery. Here many young artists had
their ﬁrst showings and some went on to national and international acclaim.
Founded and run by artists Mella Jaarsma and Nindityo Adipurnomo, the
gallery drew talented people from everywhere. Some stayed on to enjoy the
pleasant village-like community and learn from local artists. Painters began

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experimenting with traditional Javanese arts, such as batik cloth, and this
ancient form gained in its contemporary expression.
By the late twentieth century, some successful Indonesian artists of Bali and
Java had developed a view of their own urban modernism to the extent that
they began traveling to remote regions of the archipelago, generally deemed
as “primitive” (“primitif ”), to visit simpler societies. They sought artistic
inspiration from less cosmopolitan people and more “authentic” designs of
outer island cultures, especially followers of animism. For most Indonesians
the term “primitive” does not evoke romantic notions of a “noble savage,”
close-to-nature spirituality, or exotic handcrafts as it tends to in the West.
Rather, middle-class Indonesians largely regard primitif peoples as uncivilized,
unsanitary, and even as godless heathens.
The artists seeking out such peoples and their arts were among the ﬁrst relatively elite Indonesians (aside from native anthropologists) to acknowledge outer
island cultural validity—even if they were copying and eventually proﬁting from
arts largely unrecognized by central Indonesians and the national government.
By the 1990s, artists in Java and Bali included all sorts of Timor, Sumba, West
Irian, Toraja (Sulawesi), Batak (Sumatra), and Maluku imagery in their paintings and sculptures. Perhaps also inﬂuenced by foreign interest and patronage, a
“primitive art” trend developed among urban artists of Indonesia.
Mass tourism produced the most recent and pervasive effect upon modern Indonesian art, on the heels of world collecting of “ethnic arts.” Global
fashion culture constructed from motifs of non-Western societies created a
Euro-American phenomenon of “ethnic chic.”21 This reached its economic
peak in the mid-1990s, before the Asian monetary crisis, the resignation of
Suharto, and the terrorist bombings in Bali curtailed tourism.
For more than thirty years, Indonesia hosted hoards of international visitors. Bali was a thriving hub for surfers, Hollywood ﬁlm stars, honeymooners,
New Age self-improvement groups, budget travelers, wealthy tourists renting
idyllic villas, and seekers of a tropical paradise. Bali became the entrepôt for
the arts of Indonesia, drawing in countless outer island traders and designers
and impressing them within its cosmopolitan, multi-cultural environments.
Here Indonesians could see the main showcase for arts of the archipelago,
along with contemporary world trends in design. And just had other artists
for centuries, they began to adapt and alter their creations to both reﬂect their
knowledge of other worlds and to appeal to a global market.22
Textiles

Complex in the making and visually splendid, of all of the Indonesian
arts, textiles most readily signal social importance and relationship to the

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63

supernatural. The types of cloth and weaving techniques in Indonesia are
the most diverse and complex of any in the world and go back for well over
a millennium. A ninth century bas-relief carving on Borobudur, Java, shows
a woman pulling a yarn from a skein. To this day, hand-woven fabrics are
central as status markers, in all rituals, exchange between families, indicators
of ethnic identity, appearing stylishly modern, and in needs of everyday life.
One anthropologist noted that “history often has a physical, tactile form in
Southeast Asia”23 and this is especially so in Indonesia, where cloth enfolds
people and history on numerous levels. Through time, Indonesian textiles
have transformed consistently in their designs and uses, responding to many
inﬂuences—most recently world fashion trends. As a social, economic, and
aesthetic medium—an art—cloth is also a channel for passions that underlie
people’s endeavors. Cloth excites elusive realms of the imagination, playing
upon memory while inviting new designs. In current times, designs in fabrics
reveal profound shifts in the perspectives of those who create them.24
Textiles immediately communicate their value through materials they contain
and in the amount of time and expertise involved in their creation. This generally
holds true for most Indonesian visual arts—the more detailed and time-consuming,
the better. Fine fabrics long were prized regalia for royals and continue to distinguish those able to own them. Limitations on space make description of all textile
types impossible here. Chapter 5 provides more discussion of fabrics.
Two major customary fabrics are ikat (from the Indonesian word mengikat,
meaning to tie or bind) and batik (perhaps originally from the Indonesian
word betik, meaning to come into appearance or come to light). These are
both “resist-dye” methods, in which patterned sections of fabrics are ﬁnely
drawn or stamped with wax (for batik) to resist dye, or pre-woven yarns are
tightly bound in patterns with palm ﬁbers (for ikat) so that they will not
absorb colors when immersed into dye baths. Ikat roughly compares to the
“tie-dye” method popular in creating T-shirt patterns in the United States
and elsewhere. When the wax or palm ﬁbers are removed, a speciﬁc pattern
appears, in contrast to the dyed areas of the piece left unbound.
Ikat cloths receive their colors and patterns before the cloth is actually
woven. This technique is common to Bali, eastern Indonesia, Sulawesi, and
the Kalimantan and Borneo interior. Such fabrics range from delicately patterned pieces from Flores to the vividly pictorial cloths from Sumba. In these
regions, people carefully bind sections of the warp threads in distinct patterns.
Even before a warp is dipped into the ﬁrst dye bath, the bound sections sharply
delineate the images that eventually will decorate the ﬁnal woven cloth.
Dyes are important for quality, status, and symbolic value. The major dyes
used in ikat are a muted blue from the indigo plant and a rust red (Morinda
citrifolia) scraped from the inner bark of the roots of an indigenous tree. One

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dye might be applied over another to create wine colors or near blacks. Mud,
safﬂower, a shrub called Cudrania, and other plant dyes also come into use.
In most places, indigo carries a magical and dangerous quality and often only
older women use it. The morinda red in some regions, such as Sumba, is only
meant for nobility. Numerous immersions in this red dye produce an intense
color. The same applies to indigo, which might require ten to ﬁfteen immersions into the dye pot to achieve a rich, deep blue or a near black. The richer
the color, the more valued the cloth.
An ikat warp is bound and dyed, then unbound, bound again in other
sections and re-dyed until all of the colors and patterns desired appear. This
process is extremely time-consuming and in some places, such as Sumba,
people tell of particularly complex ikat cloths that were 10 years in the making. These fabrics prominently assert prestige, for their creators and eventual wearers. In most regions they clearly mark the social level of the people
they clothe. Sumba’s intensely pictorial ikat cloths reﬂect skill, imagination,
local animist and borrowed foreign motifs, and the dualistic nature of the

One half of a man’s ikat textile (a hinggi)
from East Sumba with local motifs of
crayﬁsh, crocodiles, roosters, peacocks,
birds, and heraldic lions (borrowed from
the Dutch) on the borders. The other side
of this hanging piece is identical. 1998.
Courtesy of Jill Forshee.

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65

island’s belief system in its more traditional pieces. These fabrics contain
motifs reﬂecting each other side-to-side and end-to-end (something like a
Rorschach print). One scholar concluded that the large cloths worn by men
in Sumba (hinggi) actually formed a picture of social organization of the
region—mirroring villages with houses on either side of a central yard where
priests and leaders mediated between two sides.25
A good ikat features clear, tightly rendered motifs, with little or no bleeding
of one dyed area into another. As in other arts of Indonesia, the more complex
the design and color variation, the better and often ikat pieces are incorporated
with other sorts of weaving into one spectacular cloth. Although ikat is produced in other parts of the world, such as Guatemala, nowhere does it reach the
level of clarity and intricacy of motifs as in Indonesia. Ikats from the island of
Savu are especially ﬁne, with tightly rendered ﬂoral motifs symbolizing clans.
In the 1980s and 1990s, ikat was wildly popular with tourists and international collectors. Many outer island people took their ikats to Bali to
reach tourist markets. In Bali, where people have been extremely innovative
for centuries—and very adept at copying—entrepreneurs fashioned outer island cloth into stylish clothing to appeal to foreigners. People from Sumba,
Timor, Flores, Savu, and other islands began to design new kinds of ikats to
appeal to foreigners. This took place most dramatically in Sumba, famous for
its bold, pictorial motifs and history of borrowing from outsiders. In the mid
1990s, one man in Sumba created a “world leaders’ series of ikats in which
he featured then-president Bill Clinton. In the 1980s, another inventive
Sumbanese began designing narrative cloths, which told a story from top to
bottom, as opposed to the bi-facial format people had historically followed.
These fabrics became immensely popular with tourists and eventually entered
customary realms in Sumba, such as in bridal exchange and funerals. The
man to invent such “story cloths” was also of the ﬁrst generation generally
to become literate in Sumba during the 1960s and 1970s. Reading affected
his way of thinking about and designing actual events in real space and time,
with distinct beginnings and endings.
One textile scholar considers that “[b]atik has become synonymous with
Indonesia, the island of Java in particular. It is closely entwined with the other
great art forms of Java, the wayang kulit shadow plays and the gamelan orchestras.” She continues, “Not only did the Javanese dalang … preside over the most
important of the performing arts, he was also an important source of batik
patterns. When creating his puppets, he made perforated patterns of what they
would wear. These were later sold in the market to eager women.”26
Batik involves two different methods and produces two distinct types of
cloth. The most prized technique employs a tubular canting with a tapered
copper end (similar in design to an old-fashioned fountain pen) and is called

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Batik cap pattern from central Java, decorating a
long cloth wrapped around the lower body called a
kain. Courtesy of Jill Forshee.

batik tulis (hand-inscribed batik). The canting holds hot wax in its hollow
tube and the batik artist meticulously applies this to cloth to create a design.
This method requires painstaking skill not easily mastered (the runny wax is
extremely hard to control), yet artists have produced complex, elegant fabrics
using this method. Cap (stamp) describes the more common batik method,
whereby a hand-held copper stamp applies the hot wax to the cloth. Cap
cloth involves a repeated stamping of any number of patterns, requires skill,
and can be quite elegant in its own right.
Batik also has become a respected form of painting, and artists in Java
and Bali mainly carry this out. A Javanese artist, Mohamed Hadi, became
internationally renowned for his elegant batik designs, as did a number of
artists from workshops in the Yogyakarta-Solo region of central Java. Today
batik artists produce exquisite pieces on silk or the ďŹ nest of cotton. In Bali and
Java, batik paintings of temple rituals, pedicab drivers, and cockďŹ ghts have
become a popular tourist art, though usually lacking the aesthetic ďŹ neness
and skill of the more developed artists.

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Batik carries on as the ﬁnest of arts in Indonesia, as does ikat. Although
greatly boosted by foreign interest, these textiles continue to bear great signiﬁcance for people throughout Indonesia—for which cloth serves the mundane aspects of life as well as the prestigious and the sacred. Importantly,
batik creates awe and respect worldwide, as people come to appreciate the
tremendous extent of its artistry.
LITERATURE
Early Indonesian Writing

Written script began to appear in the Indonesian archipelago in the fourth
century a.d., following cultural and religious inﬂuences from India. Pallawa,
a script from southern India, spread through the courts of the islands. By the
eighth century, this eventually transformed into an “Indonesianized” script
called Kawi (although Austronesian in syntax, 30 percent of its lexicon derived from Sanskrit, according to a scholar of Balinese culture and history27)
used in Java, Sumatra, and Bali. By the fourteenth century, Kawi (meaning
“poetic”) had become diversiﬁed throughout Java, Sumatra, Bali, Madura,
and Sumbawa.28 By the sixteenth century, four distinct families of scripts had
evolved to the extent of replacing Kawi: Batak, South Sumatran, Javanese
Balinese, and Bugis-Makasar.29 While these writing systems all bore early
Indic inﬂuences, they developed distinctly different characteristics to the
point of becoming independent regional scripts. Their evolution took place
through local ideas, needs, and inﬂuences that remain largely unknown. Not
much exists of early Indonesian scripts, as they were better suited to palm leaf
and paper than to stone carving and have not survived the effects of a tropical climate and time. It appears, however, that these scripts traveled widely
through the islands by way of alliances and trade.
In 1930, the Dutch discovered (through a census) the highest literacy
rate in the archipelago to be in the Lampung region of southern Sumatra.
Despite no formal schooling, nearly half of the population could write and
read in the old South Sumatran ka-ga-nga alphabet, passed down in the
home through generations. The term for this script, ka-ga-nga, derives from
the ﬁrst three letters in its alphabet. Young people used such writing to
compose ﬂirtatious love notes to each other in the form of four-lined poems
called pantuns.30 Ka-ga-nga script also spread to Bali, South Sulawesi, and
Sumbawa, where people used it in genealogies, histories, literature, and books
of divination.31
The poetic language of Kawi (from old Javanese) long expressed high
forms of speech and writing in Bali and Java (and still continues in some

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settings). Before the spread of Islam, people enjoyed a Kakawin (old Javanese
romantic poetry) literature—popular for love letters and poems and written
on pandanus petals or strips of wood. This held special value in the royal
courts, where composing love poems was essential.32 This script became lavish in its design elegance and used decoratively with visual arts. Kawi survives
and holds an important function in literary and dramatic forms (often used
in wayang puppet performances), as well as for religious speech in Bali.
Apart from courtly cultures, poetry developed into a kind of contest in
Indonesia (as in much of Southeast Asia), whether written or spoken. The
pantun poem became central in courtship in Sumatra, Java, and Bali. Islam
eventually suppressed such writing, but the popular poetic form persisted
in spoken words. However, “Islam took with it to Southeast Asia a very different sexual morality which regarded it as not only unnecessary but also
dangerous for women to be able to write.”33 Thus, in much of the Indonesia
archipelago:
Prior to the sixteenth century expansion of Islam and Christianity, writing was being
adopted by largely animist cultures where women were more commercially and
socially active than in other parts of the world. Women took up writing as actively
as men, to use in exchanging notes and recording debts and other commercial matters which were in the female domain. The transmission of literacy was therefore a
domestic matter, largely the responsibility of mothers and older siblings, and had
nothing to do with an exclusive priestly class.34

It appears that levels of literacy in sixteenth century Indonesia rivaled any in
the world for women and that levels were high by any international standards
of the times.35 Yet the arrival of Islam changed this to a great extent. Islamic
practice also speciﬁed that its texts be written in Arabic script, which was not
well suited to writing Austronesian languages. Thus, various, distinct versions
of Arabic script developed in regions of the archipelago. Moreover, the curves
and dots of the Arabic writing were difﬁcult to reproduce on palm leaves, so
a demand for paper grew. As paper is more durable than leaves, many more
texts have survived from the Islamic period than from earlier eras.36
Stories called hikayat were chronicles in the Malay language written in
Arabic script, a type of language called Jawi. The Sejarah Melayu (History
of the Malay World) written in 1612, tells of various sultanates and their
connections with the Srivijaya and Majapahit empires. Hikayats recorded
local tales of sultans across Indonesia along with spoken folklore. A cultural
network of such Islamic literature developed based in texts and formal letters, stretching from Aceh in northern Sumatra to Ternate in the eastern
Maluku Islands.

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Babad tales were a form of literature written in Old Javanese and sung
aloud. These were largely chronicles about Muslim saints or kings and their
relations to the divine, but this form was also popular in Bali Hindu culture
and performed as dance. Babads legitimized religious personages or ruling
lineages. Like hikayat writing, Babad stories recorded political history. These
often-romantic adventure stories carried subtle, multiple meanings in manners characteristic of Javanese arts and literature.
Indian epics from Sanskrit, such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata
entered into the oldest Javanese poetic style (as did popular Javanese stories), which people then considered to be about actual characters and events
from the distant past. Indonesians, particularly the Balinese and Javanese,
made the Indian stories their own, even placing them in local geographical
settings. These tales form a basic theme of the wayang shadow play, dance
dramas, popular stories, and continue into contemporary comic books, ﬁlms,
and television programs.
The Mahabharata (Mahabarata in Indonesian spelling) tells of the ﬁve
Pandawa brothers in tragic and ongoing warfare with parties of the Kaurava family—forming a classic theme of good against evil. The Pandawas
align with and receive help from the gods; the Kauravas are in league with
evil giants. The ﬁve brothers and many diverse characters of this lengthy
epic (90,000 verses in Sanskrit) became basic Southeast Asian archetypes of
heroicism, vanity, nobility, loyalty, bravery, folly, lust, aggression, duplicity,
and other human attributes. As does the Ramayana, the Mahabarata (Ind.)
carries on moral ideals and models of right and wrong behavior for men and
women, while permitting complexity.
The Ramayana also has been immensely inﬂuential and popular throughout Southeast Asia and especially in Indonesia. Made up of 2,774 verses
when translated into ancient Javanese from Sanskrit (around the tenth century), this epic centers upon king Rama and his wife Sita, her abduction by
the evil Ravana, her eventual rescue by the loyal and courageous monkey
king Hanuman, and Sita’s wrenching dilemma of proving her ﬁdelity to
Rama. From here the tale goes on, as the couple retain their royal position
for centuries. Like the Mahabarata, this epic evokes the moral precepts listed
above, but especially concerns itself with loyalty, most poignantly in Sita’s
devotion to Rama against all odds.
The tales of the Prince Panji began in Java in the fourteenth century, in
settings preceding the Majapahit Empire. The hero of these stories is a prince,
who takes on the name of Panji. He travels unrecognized as a royal throughout his adventures, and he eventually proves his valor. While set in Java and
reﬂecting its culture, Panji tales also became popular in Bali (becoming dance

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dramas). A basic theme of these tales involved the hero appearing unknown
at the scene of a battle, conquering women, winning in war, and enjoying thousands of followers—classically important indicators of potency in
Indonesia.37
Modern Indonesian Writing

In an examination of nationalism, an historian surmised: “Communities
are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in
which they are imagined.”38 Following literacy spread by the Dutch, rapidly
growing numbers of Indonesians began to think about themselves in relation
to unknown, distant others in profoundly new ways. Print-capitalism broadened thinking, that is, newspapers, books, and magazines allowed people to
see pictures and read in a common language (either Dutch or Malay) and
then imagine themselves as part of a greater community, a nation. Following
this, more people enjoyed access to a shared medium of expression—writing
in the European Roman script.
Literacy alters the ways that people conceive of time and events and how
they imagine themselves and the world. Reading permits pause for mental
reﬂection that listening to a spoken tale might not. Moreover, beginnings
and endings become distinct in written form, as events in linear sequence that
chronicle the passing of time. Some have noticed that in nonliterate societies, visual and aural memories are extraordinarily acute, because people fully
engage their senses for “recording” events and images. Mental retention of
sights and sounds creates narratives in such cultures, where people critically
rely upon memorization in the passing on of knowledge.
Most places in Indonesia maintain a rich tradition of stories of the past,
often spoken in specialized ritual speech ﬁlled with symbolic imagery. In
their various local languages, people also carry on tales of encounters with
foreigners, local battles, witchcraft, tricksters, and catastrophic events. In the
past, such speech was indiscernible to outsiders due to language differences
and people’s inability (or unwillingness) to translate their oral traditions into
Indonesian, Dutch, English, or other languages. In more recent times, however, anthropologists and Malay/Indonesian authors have written translations
and interpretations of some of these spoken forms. Still, a great many stories
and ritual speech modes remain unknown to outsiders. Through literacy,
nonetheless, Indonesians have been able to record a number of their own oral
traditions.
Modern Indonesian literature began to appear by the 1920s, largely by
authors connected to the Dutch managed and highly popular publishing

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house Balai Pustaka (“Bureau of Literature”). The Indonesian literary journal
Pudjangga Baru (“New Poet”) began in the 1930s. Many scholars since have
remarked upon the disproportionate number of Sumatran writers represented
in the new publications, especially those from the Minangkabau region where
the language was closely related to Malay (later to become the Indonesian
national language). Because of this, it proved difﬁcult for writers from Java
and elsewhere to do creative work in the upcoming national language. Although Malay was the parlance of trade and public organizations (aside from
Dutch), very few schools taught it and most people of the archipelago actually did not think in this language.39 Consequently, early works available in
Malay/Indonesian include a predominance of Sumatrans and reﬂect cultures
and values of their places and times.
Some Sumatran authors transformed oral autobiographies and traditional
male travel adventures. called rantau (“traveling abroad” to gain prestige,
wealth, and manhood), into published works in the ﬁrst half of the twentieth
century.40 These writers published through Bulai Pustaka (described above)
“an organ for publishing high-quality works of ﬁction and folklore in reﬁned, grammatically elegant Indonesian,” which by the 1920s had become
a “major venue for popular literature, particularly ‘journey novels’ turning
on love story themes.” Moreover,“[t]he house published works that directly
engaged issues of Indies modernity”41 and thus gave voice to the conﬂicts and
confusion Indonesians were experiencing between modern European and
locally traditional values and life choices. Important literature of this time included the works (titles translated into English here) Me and Toba: Notes from
Childhood Times, by P. Pospos; Village Childhood, by Muhamad Radjab; Sitti
Nurbaya (a girl’s name), by Marah Rusli; and Childhood Experiences, by Nur
Sutan Iskander.42 Sitti Nurbaya told of a young woman forced to wed an evil
old man to whom her father owed money. Ofﬁcially acclaimed as Indonesia’s
ﬁrst novel of substance, for decades this book has been compulsory reading
for junior high school students.
Before national independence, however, numerous Indonesian elites had
received Dutch educations. Now famous among these students was Raden
Adjeng Kartini. As a young woman of the Javanese Priyayi class, Kartini
wrote a series of letters (largely to a friend in the Netherlands) describing her
life in colonial Java and expressing a passionate desire to study in Holland
and learn more of the world. This became a book years after Kartini’s death,
Letters of a Javanese Princess (ﬁrst published in English in 1920) and is now
classic reading about the life and times of an intelligent, philosophical, and
extraordinarily articulate young woman during the Dutch period. Kartini ardently writes of her personal conﬂicts between Javanese and European values.

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Her progressive ideas caused distress within her parental home. Such controversial notions challenged the very deﬁnition of propriety and purpose
for women. The ﬁnal writings of Kartini, who died young after childbirth,
express a resolved re-commitment to Javanese values, especially motherhood
and obedience to family as the central purpose of women. This shift surprises
many Western readers of the book, who expect Kartini to pursue her literary
dreams. They cannot imagine the cultural and moral weight that family expectations and duties had upon the most intellectual of Javanese women.
After national independence, Balai Pustaka—begun by the Dutch for
Indonesian elites—became the publishing house of the new Republic of
Indonesia.43 Growing tensions between the politics of the right and the left
of the new nation hampered the press, however, in soliciting new manuscripts of a consistently high standard. After President Suharto took control
of the government in the mid-1960s, the publishing house declined following a total ban on books with leftist themes. The new state publishing house
of the state became Gramedia, an adjunct to the Kompas daily newspaper.
As recently noted: “For Indonesia’s largest commercial publisher the best
investment and fastest-selling products seem to be self-improvement and
business management guides, cookbooks, and translations of foreign popular romance and mystery novel.”44 These included “airport” books by Agatha
Christie, Danielle Steele, Jackie Collins, Sidney Shelton, and the like.45 Small
publishers, however, became much more important and inﬂuential under
the New Order, often defying national policies. Suharto’s strict government
censorship upon ﬁlms and television did not similarly affect book publishing, which the New Order seemed to ignore to some extent. Suharto was
no intellectual and perhaps thought that too few Indonesians read or could
afford books to be of much consequence. Still, the government established
“authorized reading.” Yet, despite the controls of its most repressive regime,
the Suharto era was one of Indonesia’s greatest literary periods. Some remark
upon this irony:
Ironically, in the ﬁnal decade of the New Order some of the most acclaimed “high
literature” (such as the works by Pramoedya) [were] also simultaneously bacaan liar
[wild writing], in the sense that they remained outside the mainstream publishing industry and transgressed the state’s regulation of content and circulation of books.46

Pramoedya Ananta Toer remains Indonesia’s most acclaimed writer, both
in his own country and internationally. His stories encompass Japan’s wartime occupation, the Indonesian national revolution, his years of imprisonment under the colonial Dutch, and then by both the Sukarno and Suharto
regimes. Eventually, with a lessening of political oppression in the late 1990s,
Pramoedya published his most damning book of the Suharto period, while

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73

celebrating intellectual freedom and the human spirit: The Mute’s Soliloquy.
The book echoes ancient Indonesian epic themes of courage, morality, loyalty to one’s allies and cause, and unﬂagging resilience.
As the subject of university courses the world over, Toer holds the reputation as one of the ﬁnest and most historically and socially insightful writers
that Indonesia has ever produced. During the mass political upheaval across
Indonesia in 1965 following the overthrow of Sukarno, Pramoedya (and
thousands of others accused of Communism or political dissidence against
Suharto’s New Order regime) was held for years without charges. Eventually
exiled to the remote island prison of Buru in eastern Indonesia, Toer survived
whereas many perished of starvation, physical abuses, and diseases.
Yet, during his 11 years on Buru Island, Pramoedya produced major
works, including the four novels of the Buru Quartet—essential reading for
anyone studying Indonesian literature or modern political history. This epic
consists of the volumes This Earth of Mankind, Child of All Nations, Footsteps,
and House of Glass. Toer’s quartet progressively traces the emergence of
Indonesian nationalism, while depicting realities of local life, identities, and
thought during the ﬁrst half of the twentieth century as affected by those in
power.
Although government forces conﬁscated and destroyed much of his work
during his internment, The Mute’s Soliloquy, published in 1999, survived. It
describes the Buru penal colony and Pramoedya’s memories of his earlier life.47
While published in 23 countries, Toer’s work remained banned in Indonesia.
Yet, this prolonged government censorship greatly embellished Pramoedya’s
celebrity and heroic status among many, who admired his dedication to social
justice during the repressive New Order years. Toer became an international
literary and revolutionary legend, to the extent that “Pramoedya is the only
Indonesian writer to have had the majority of his ﬁctional works published in
translation by large international commercial publishers. Around the world
his unjust treatment by the Suharto government stimulated interest and sympathy.”48 On April 30, 2006, Pramoedya Ananta Toer died in Jakarta at the
age of 81.
Also illustrious and internationally recognized, Umar Kayam is a different sort of literary ﬁgure. As a versatile professional writer, Kayam worked
as a government ofﬁcial, actor, art and literary critic, columnist, well-known
intellectual, and novelist. Widely rumored as engaging in behind-the-scenes
politicking against what became the totalitarian rule of Sukarno, Kayam
eventually received from President Suharto the position of Director General
of Television, Radio, and Film. While part of the New Order propaganda
circuit, Kayam permitted private radio stations and advertising in the media
to lessen their dependence on state ﬁnancing. He supported international

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exchange of scholars and ideas—facilitating a ﬂow of information that likely
raised hackles among New Order leaders. Later, the Suharto government
let him go. Kayam did not become a controversial political critic, however,
but enjoyed elite, urban Indonesian cultural life (with a reputation of a bon
vivant, delighting in parties and good food). Wielding a peculiar intelligence,
he wrote stories in a literary style rich in multiple meanings. Well known
for his novelettes Sri Sumarah (Princess Sumarah) and Bawuk (a woman’s
name), Kayam remained associated with the Javanese priyayi class and values,
which he attempted to explain to readers through his tales.
President Sukarno jailed Mochtar Lubis, editor, journalist, poet, and
novelist for 10 years following his stance against corruption and insistence
upon a free press. Lubis headed a daily newspaper, Indonesia Raya, closed
repeatedly for subversive writing. Eventually, Suharto closed it for good. Yet
courageously defending freedom of the press, Lubis distinguished himself
throughout Asia. His best-known works are collections of short stories, Twilight in Jakarta and The Outlaw and Other Stories, both published by Oxford
University Press. In 1990, he published a history of Indonesia entitled,
Indonesia: Land under the Rainbow. In the Preface, Lubis wrote of the challenges of writing this book as an Indonesian: “and not be overwhelmed
by the historical material written by so many Dutch and other European
scholars”49 with their foreign values and stereotyping of Indonesian groups.
Lubis approached this book through what he called an “Indonesian optic.”
Near the end of the volume, the author urges Indonesians to abandon their
ancient conceptions of kingship and power. He asserts that in Indonesia’s
modern society, leaders should all the more receive their power from the
people and not the gods. Thus, he poses a challenge to not only classical
Indonesian ways of thinking, but “to all humankind.���50
The Weaverbirds, ﬁrst published in 1981, is Y. B. Mangunwijaya’s epic
account of personal struggles from the time of Indonesian independence
through an oil crisis of the mid-1970s. It traces the lives of childhood friends
who grow up to be on opposing political sides. The book ambiguously casts
characters as neither “good” nor “bad”—allowing for a wide range of human
motives and interpretations in times of conﬂict.51
Saraswati Sunindyo is a contemporary and outspoken critic of Indonesian
sexist roles for women (narrowly generic under Suharto) as primarily wives,
mothers, and supporters of the state. Ambiguity aside, Sunindyo addresses the
heavy-handed social and political control of women’s sexuality, accenting the
general practice of deﬁning women as “good” or “bad.” In the poem, “City
Garbage from the Nongo River,”52 Sunindyo painfully describes the nightmarish plight of an urban woman who dares to stay alone in a government

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75

hotel in a poor Javanese village. The woman is subsequently assaulted by a
local ofﬁcial she refers to as “Mr. Rambo,” alluding to the macho hero of the
Sylvester Stallone ﬁlms (long popular in Indonesia, where Rambo was lauded
as anti-communist in his violent cinematic battles in Vietnam). The aggressive ofﬁcial feels justiﬁed in attacking the woman, and the poem follows his
rationale. A woman staying alone—particularly a city woman suspected of
holding a college degree—is an abnormality, and thus invites deserved sexual
abuse. The poem contains powerful imagery of a modern, confused, debased
Indonesia: motorbikes roar all night, men force themselves upon women they
do not know, and rivers stink with garbage. In such a place, not only has
environmental and social balance gone awry, but so has human decency.
Yet, despite ofﬁcial and social pressures upon their conduct and life choices,
a number of novels and short stories have compassionately addressed the unfortunate plight of women in Indonesia, most of them written by men. Often
these tell of forced or abusive marriages, declines into poverty, cruelly treated
servants, wayward husbands, and other sorrows. The widely read novel Sitti
Nurbaya (written by Marah Rusli and published in 1922) may have set the
tone for such tales, but desperate circumstances of many living in wretched
poverty without family support have inspired poignant stories from many
Indonesian writers.
So far, Javanese writers have dominated this section, but those of other
islands have entered the mainstream of modern literature as well. Not all
write directly of corruption and violence, but authors like Gerson Poyk,
from the small island of Roti in eastern Indonesia, use satire to animate stories and provide messages. Poyk wrote the ﬁrst published Indonesian story
about West Papua (or Irian Jaya to Indonesians) in 1972. “Matias Akankari”
follows a man from West Papua who ﬁnds himself in an Indonesian metropolitan location and his confused impressions and hapless reactions to
his inexplicable experiences. While some viewed this tale as ridiculing the
“primitive” Papuans, others regarded “Matias Akankari” as a mockery of incessant Indonesian government folly in trying to “civilize” (i.e., “Javanize”)
peoples from remote islands in culturally inappropriate ways. This includes
societies that never had a say in becoming part of the Indonesian nation, with
some even opposing it. Poyk’s story tells, with humor, of the vast cultural
and perceptual differences of those from Indonesia’s peripheries compared
to its centers, which the powers in Jakarta refused to fully grasp or leave well
enough alone.
The writers discussed so far all have represented literature with a capital
“L,” termed sastra in Indonesian and read by university students and those
with a sophisticated degree of literary appreciation. All in all, many have

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expressed values and provided social exposés that ﬂy in the face of propaganda
and policies of those in power. In doing so they have earned a reputation for
courageous integrity—using political savvy and symbolic dexterity in their
writing.
Popular Literary Culture

Books read by the greater part of Indonesia’s population fall under
categories of ﬁksi (ﬁction) or roman (referring to romantic pulp novels).
Many young women read these formulaic, simple stories, depicting romances
between young men and women. There may be handholding, but stories
are not sexual. Plots typically center upon distress among couples involving
jealousy over a rival or disapproval of their parents.
Remaja (adolescent) is a type of ﬁction published for teenagers. Among
this genre was the popular Lupus series, created by Hilman Hariwijaya. Lupus
books began circulating in 1986, starring a young, mildly rebellious teenager
(by Western standards) embodying all symbols of Indonesian youthful “cool”
to his readers. Much was based in Jakartan popular culture, with its own
distinctive “dialect,” peppered with largely American English words and
Western consumer brand names, such as Adidas, Pizza Hut, and Walkman.
Characters in the Lupus series obviously had money and were thus admired
and emulated by their young readers.
Along with prestigious brand names ﬂaunted in Lupus, young “hip”
Jakartans use terms like, “okay-lah,” and “That’s right-lah” (“lah” is a particle of emphasis in Indonesian, used at the end of a word), thus mixing
languages to claim their own unique speech style. Indeed, style is at the very
heart of popular culture, the latest the better. Some characters in the Lupus
books sported blond-streaked hair and familiarity with American fast food
chains, like McDonald’s. This marked them as well off compared to most
Indonesians. These franchises also confer upon their customers the highest
prestige marker of popular culture—that of being “modern.”
Comic books have fascinated Indonesians for years, with a number of indigenous artists and writers. Newspapers translated foreign comics, such as
the French Asterix and the American Charley Brown. However, through the
1980s and 1990s, Japanese comic books (translated into Indonesian) grew
wildly popular, making up about 90 percent of imported comics.53
Levels of violence in Japanese comic books appealed to Indonesian youths,
accustomed to seeing gory battles and beheadings in their own media.
However, the overt sexual imagery of these comics did not sit well with the
New Order. Often sections of the books were deleted or blacked out with

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77

permanent markers. Today, these comics continue to be sold in Indonesia.
Other popular comics feature classical American characters like Donald
Duck, Superman, or Archie and Veronica. Indonesian youth notably prize
foreign characters and products.
The Indonesian news magazine, Tempo, began in 1971, was modeled on
Time magazine’s format and style, and became a national institution. Popular
among the middle class, Tempo contained witty satire, irreverent cartoons,
and lively and hard-hitting investigative reporting on current issues. Banned
twice under the Suharto regime for reporting on corruption, political demonstrations, and topics the New Order did not want its citizens to read about,
Tempo reopened after Suharto resigned. In 2003, however, it faced destruction
by thugs working for a wealthy tycoon after the magazine had published
an article concerning his corruption. The editor of Tempo went to jail for
defamation of the businessman. Thousands of Indonesians were outraged,
many recalling the darkest days of the Suharto era. An International Federation of journalists wrote letters of protest to President Megawati. Tempo now
continues under founder and senior editor Goenawan Mohamed, winner of
numerous international awards for promoting freedom of expression.54
Numerous magazines about business, technology, or fashion circulate in
Indonesia. In most urban centers, publications from around the world such
as Elle, Cosmopolitan, The Far Eastern Economic Review, and Newsweek appear at newsstands and bookstores. The popular Femina women’s magazine
largely produces well-designed ads for fashions and cosmetics with articles on
beauty and attracting a husband. Yet, it also features stories and interviews
regarding successful career women, many of them unmarried.
In 2001, a colorfully chic magazine entitled Latitudes … views from 6°
above to 11° below the equator began publication from Bali, quickly attracting attention. The editors and writers were a mixture of Westerners and
Indonesians. With its polished, contemporary look, the magazine featured a
range of topics: reports on Jakarta’s scavenger community, lesbians on Bali,
ﬁction about Jakarta mall culture by young writers such as Ayu Utami, an
essay by journalist Ariel Heryanto regarding a crisis of mood in post-Suharto
Indonesia, and a feature report of a West Papuan woman (Yosepha Alomang)
ﬁghting for human rights and the environment. Many excellent photos accompanied the stories. While published in English, some articles provided
Indonesian translations. Many of the expatriate community in Indonesia (of
which there are thousands) subscribed to Latitudes, as did Indonesians and
foreigners. Contemporary writers such as Agus Noor, Korrie Layun Rampan,
and Dewi Lestari set their stories in modern Indonesian environments and
experimented with styles of prose. Latitudes grew popular through its panache,

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with articles and photo essays (of a never-before-seen quality and breadth) of
Indonesian life—from the popularity of instant noodles to horse racing on
the island of Sumbawa.
The Internet is a revolutionary literary medium not yet mentioned. Not
only has this “information highway” allowed Indonesians to preview and buy
books from companies like Gramedia, but it also permitted unlimited access
to knowledge, foreign literature, and political ideas (along with the global
circulation of pornography) formerly unimaginable in Indonesia. The Internet has heralded dire conditions within Indonesia to the rest of the world,
such as Suharto’s imminent demise and reports from rebel groups ﬁghting
Indonesian control in Banda Aceh, Sumatra; West Irian (Irian Jaya); and the
now nationally independent East Timor. Through cyberspace, Indonesians
began to enjoy for the ﬁrst time an utter lack of censorship and a dazzling
access to massive information.
Following the independence of East Timor, one scholar summarized that
“the internet provided a unique opportunity for East Timor to claim ‘independence in cyberspace’ as part of a spectrum of internet-related activist
struggles, sometimes dubbed ‘hactivism.’”55 This uniquely liberated space
permitted any type of expression. The Internet now stimulates rapid changes
in Indonesia, affecting politics and economics, while offering a new avenue
for art and literature. It remains to be seen how Indonesians transform their
expressions to adapt to this, as they practice their creativity in an unforeseen
dimension.
NOTES
1. Philip Rawson, The Art of Southeast Asia (London: Thames and Hudson, 1967), 203.
2. Rawson, The Art of Southeast Asia, 203.
3. Rawson, The Art of Southeast Asia, 206, paraphrased here.
4. See Alit Djajasoebrata, Shadow Theatre in Java: The Puppets, Performance and Repertoire
(Amsterdam: The Pepin Press, 1999), 41.
5. See Latitudes Magazine (published in Denpasar, Bali) August, 2004.
6. Adrian Vickers, Bali: A Paradise Created (Berkeley: Periplus Editions, 1989), 39.
7. See Anne Richter, Arts and Crafts of Indonesia (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1994),
129. See also Michael Heppel, Masks of Kalimantan (Melbourne: Exhibition Catalogue,
1992).
8. See Hildred Geertz, Images of Power: Balinese Paintings Made for Gregory Bateson and
Margaret Mead (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995), 6.
9. For a most readable translation of the Ramayana into English, see William Buck,
Ramayana (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). See also William Buck, Mahabharata
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
10. See Geertz, Images of Power, 1995, 6.

4
Architecture and Housing
This chapter examines architecture and housing across Indonesia, with an
emphasis upon “vernacular architecture,” meaning homes in which ordinary
people live. Indonesians usually regard their homes in fundamentally different ways than do Westerners. Not only do homes provide shelter and
protection from elements, but Indonesian dwellings frequently require the
reverence given to animate forms. The speciﬁcations of their construction,
design, accompanying rituals, building materials, divisions, and locations
demand careful attention to adat (customary law), ancestral protocol, and
local beliefs in spirits. People who eventually inhabit homes, moreover, continuously affect the structures’ spiritual well being, creating positive or negative environments.
Besides family abodes, across Indonesia people refer to many types of
structures as “houses,” including those created and used for speciﬁc purposes
nondomestic in nature. Recently, a Timor anthropologist listed 32 types of
buildings falling under the rubric of “house” (uma in the local Tetun language of the Wehali people). These included “the sitting place house,” “the
birth place house,” “the amulet house,” “mother elder sister younger sister
house,” “the sea house,” and even “the ugly house.”1 The basic Indonesian
word for house, rumah, applies to many kinds of structures, but rumah tangga
speciﬁes a family household. Tangga means a ladder, which many once used
to enter their elevated family homes (and some still do). Most people, however, simply refer to their house as their rumah.
In contrast to Western homes, Indonesians often disperse their households
into separate structures for speciﬁc functions, the relative status of household
members or even buildings, or following beliefs in spiritually auspicious or

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dangerous locations. The many-layered meanings Indonesians bestow upon
places called homes profoundly differs from Western notions of private residences.
The latter section of the chapter brieﬂy examines public architecture, including temples, mosques, churches, graves, monuments, and modern urban
buildings. Such architecture tends to either draw Indonesians together (most
notably in places of worship) or, in instances of urban development, tear
communities apart leaving many with nowhere to go. Aside from considering the history, forms, and cultural and religious symbolism of these larger
ediﬁces, this section describes their effects upon Indonesian communities.
COMPARING WESTERN NOTIONS OF “HOME”
AND PROPERTY TO THOSE OF INDONESIANS
Regarding Western homes, people often assume that for many centuries
they have resembled the private, comfortable, clean, and consciously decorated domiciles owned (or desired) by people today. Indeed, homes in the
United States now typically reﬂect the major expenditure of their owners, as
they often undergo remodeling, enlargement, or redecoration to continuously
improve upon their domestic function, visual appeal, market value, “keeping
up with the neighbors,” and showcasing prestige. An entire publishing industry of magazines and books promotes the beautiﬁcation of the home (as do
popular television programs), presenting magniﬁcent residences of celebrities
as idyllic examples of “the good life.” Indeed, owning a fashionably large
or even palatial home has become a consumer imperative in middle-class
American society, where conspicuous consumption appears more vigorous
than ever in this ﬁrst decade of the twenty-ﬁrst century.
A family home as a realm of domestic comfort and pride, nonetheless, was
not always so. The European evolution toward the private, aesthetically pleasing home, traced historically—began with a speciﬁcally Dutch female attitude
toward domesticity and comfortable décor apparent in the sixteenth century.2
In a Dutch book of photographs of the colonial era, one picture illustrates an
interior of a colonial home in 1883 in Medan, Sumatra, revealing a cozily appointed dining room with a bordering sitting area. Carpets soften the ﬂoors,
mirrors and pictures embellish the walls, dining chairs sit backed with lace, an
attractive glass lamp hangs over the table, various small tables display plants and
pottery, and thick draperies divide rooms. The home appears lived in, thoughtfully furnished, clean, and comfortable.3 By contrast, photographs of even the
most elite Indonesians pictured in the same volume portray them sitting on
chairs in rooms with no other décor, on porches, or on mats outdoors.4
A basic contrast between most Indonesians and peoples of more industrialized
societies regarding homes and their relationship to nature is summed up well:

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85

The more effort is expended on built forms, the more architecture mediates our
experience of the world, even as it may continue to mirror the social construction
of cosmological ideas. In modern industrial societies, the process has reached such
an extreme that buildings maroon us inside gigantic bubbles of artiﬁcial climate,
within which we pass our whole lives without ever touching ground or knowing
where food comes from. Among the animist peoples of the Austronesian world, however, the fragmenting of a holistic worldview appears to be deliberately resisted. In
these cosmologies, humans still participate in nature on very much the same terms as
everything else….The house, too, vegetal like its surroundings, shares in the life force
which animates the universe; like everything else in the environment, it is viewed as a
subjective entity with which interaction and communication are possible.5

This universal life force underlies the Indonesian concept of semangat,
meaning “spirit,” “zest,” or “soul.” People, gatherings, places, music, structures, and so forth can all possess semangat—a positive force of vitality.
Themes such as spirits, status, ancestors, prominent cosmological principles
like semangat, and the importance of rituals and adat customs interconnect
most everything in this book. When these principles and customs undergo
serious disruption, social life, individuals, and communities often go awry.
Finally, privacy (pribadi) was a nonexistent term in Indonesian language
before borrowed from Europeans. Indonesian homes often bustle with family and visitors. One Indonesian author describes what living in a Sumatran
communal Minangkabau great house was like as a boy:
My mother occupied one of the cramped rooms, and there I was born. I would say
it was like being born in a barracks, since there were more than forty people living
in that house at the time. The seven girls all had children, half of them themselves
had children, and every night seven unfamiliar men came to the house, that is, the
husbands of the seven women. One can imagine how noisy the place was, what with
all these individual needs, dispositions, and behaviors colliding. Morning, noon, and
night it was one big hullabaloo.6

Yet, despite his memories of being crowded, surrounded by household
noise, and personal “collisions” of the many occupants, the writer continues:
That house and its surroundings always made me feel extremely nostalgic every time
I visited after I was ﬁve years old. I do not know why and have never been able to
explain it. The sense of yearning was vague, but it penetrated to my very soul.7

RESIDENTIAL HOUSES OF COMMON INDONESIANS
The home in Indonesia, historically, not only frames the center of people’s
social identities and lives, but also embodies a life force and cosmological
connections for its inhabitants. Demonstrating aesthetic taste or impressive

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interior decoration often becomes a lesser concern. This is not to suggest that
Indonesians do not care about tidiness, beauty, or comfort in their homes.
People wash their ﬂoors daily, furnish rooms, display pictures on walls, and
sweep their yards of debris. Nonetheless, interior décor devoid of cultural or
family meaning, and consistent physical maintenance are nominal concerns
compared to Western households. This difference directly reﬂects economics.
Many Indonesians who might wish to buy new furniture or paint their rooms
typically cannot afford such luxuries. Yet, charming or lavish home interiors
have seldom been status symbols or important concerns of common folk or
even many aristocrats. As noted, historically:
The peoples of monsoon Southeast Asia devoted very little of their time and resources
to their housing. No doubt the mild climate and the availability of fast-growing trees,
palms, and bamboos as building materials were the fundamental reasons for this low
priority. Because houses were so cheap to build, they were regarded as impermanent
and inappropriate as the place to sink capital.8

Indigenous building materials grew everywhere people built houses
employing the social custom of gotong royong (“mutual assistance” of
neighbors and kin involved in helping with sizeable family projects). In a
monsoonal, tropical climate, houses of common folk do not survive much
beyond ten years and people routinely replace them when they begin to fall
into decomposition.
Materials, Methods, Values, Living

Indonesians tend to live relatively close to their natural environments and
portions of a house might be open to the outdoors. Building materials derive from local trees, grasses, rocks, clays, and plants. Most homes sit atop
raised piers (also called piles), sometimes at precarious height in areas prone
to ﬂooding. Post and beam methods of construction create house frames,
usually employing joinery, pegs, or lashing instead of nails. Sometimes sizeable gaps run between hand-hewn ﬂoorboards, or holes develop in walls of
plaited palm leaf, bamboo, or grass. As vertical posts support a home and
keep it erect, walls make up the least substantial sections of most types of
houses. Rarely load bearing, walls become attached as screens for privacy after
the fact of structural building. Chickens, cats, dogs, and occasionally more
fearsome creatures like centipedes enter Indonesian interiors through gaps.
While swept clean daily, these structures are far from the comparatively sanitized, deodorized abodes many Westerners occupy.
Of the stark contrasts between conventional (and modern) Indonesian
homes and those of the West, bathrooms primarily startle and intimidate

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87

Euro-Americans. First, they usually lack decorative appeal and often contain
unavoidable tropical mold on walls and ceilings. But beyond that, many foreigners feel revulsion toward the squat toilets used by most Indonesians—
although they often consist of the same porcelain material as do Western
models.
Many Indonesian bathrooms (called kamar mandi, meaning “bathing
room” or kamar kecil, meaning “little room,” a euphemism for “toilet”) exist
behind a house, often across a yard. If within a home, these rooms typically sit at the back. As a space for defecation and/or bathing (Indonesians
wash using a plastic, handled dipper to poor water over themselves from a
cistern), these rooms exist for attending to body eliminations and ridding
one’s self of soil. Indonesians often bathe at least three times a day and value
personal cleanliness. Nevertheless, they generally regard their bathrooms as
necessary but polluted or embarrassing spaces where people spend time as
needed. These rooms remain bare of attempts toward pleasing, evocative
“atmospheres,” beyond routine cleansing. In fact, decorative features would
seem ludicrous to many, except among afﬂuent urban Indonesians following
Western models.
Pits in the ground typically provide toilets in rural areas, enclosed within
simple huts. A container of water for ﬂushing and washing oneself is always
at hand. Rural people often bathe in rivers or haul water in buckets to use
indoors, pouring water over themselves and letting it run out between ﬂoorboards to the ground below. Women typically bathe this way in the indoor
kitchen section of a traditional home.
While rooms with toilets and bathing places of the more afﬂuent usually are tiled and well cleaned, otherwise they remain functional. Many
Indonesians fear bodily secretions of others (associated with witchcraft and
maladies), so they employ the water dipper to splash and rinse a bathroom
before they use it, even if it appears immaculate. As nudity is a disgrace
in much of Indonesia, rooms for bathing are extremely private, and often
windowless.
Private property and homes became central requisites of modern capitalist
ideals of civilization and social status in the Western world. Historically in
Indonesia, people were more concerned with bathing (despite their humble
bathrooms) and physical cleanliness, perfuming the body or hair, and a neatness and elegance in dress. That is, civility and prestige were born out on the
body “in contrast to house and furniture, which earned very little attention.”9
Most believe to the present that water puriﬁes and carries away pollution.
Indonesians defecated in rivers, which they believed dissolved ﬁlth as it swept
it away, while Indians and Europeans were disposing of their excrement in
urban streets. An historian remarks that:

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Even in the biggest cities Southeast Asians lived in a dispersed pattern of single-story,
elevated, wooden houses surrounded by trees. The disposal of household refuse was
for the most part left to the pigs, chickens, or dogs which foraged beneath the house,
and to the seasonal ﬂoods which carried everything away once a year. The open and
elevated styles of house at least kept it free of the worst accumulations of decaying
debris, in a way which was impossible in the congested cities of Europe, the Middle
East, or China before the era of rubbish collection and sewage.10

Indonesian kitchens (called dapur) typically exist at the back of households. Historically and currently, a ﬂoor recession in the center or back portion of a traditional home provides the cooking area, using a wood ﬁre.
Smoke rises through openings near the peak of a roof or sometimes seeps
through the roof or plaited walls. The Dutch encouraged people to construct kitchens as separate buildings behind homes, to rid households of
unhealthy smoke and allow more space for cooking, storage, and cleaning.
In traditional homes of eastern Indonesia, some still adhere to the old manner of in-house ﬁre pit cooking. Most Indonesians, however, prepare food
in detached kitchens behind their dwellings. Households often use propane
cookers instead of wood ﬁres. As are bathrooms, these utilitarian spaces lack
decorative attention, serve for cooking only, and people do not usually eat
inside of them.
Concerning family life, some have noted that the advent of the detached
kitchen changed the focus of houses in Indonesia, causing an increased separation of men and women. This progressed to the extent that now frequently
older boys and men eat together in a house or on a porch, while women and
children eat behind the house, in or near the kitchen.11 Numerous Indonesian homes, however, do include a dining area, with a table and chairs or at
least a woven mat for people to share.
In regions where households are one structure, homes generally divide into
three tiers: The rafter or attic area beneath roofs; the living ﬂoor space of
the occupants; and the ground under a raised ﬂoor where pigs, chickens,
cats, dogs, or even water buffalo reside or forage for scraps from the home.
Of these tiers, the roof usually predominates in size, as it encloses sacred
spaces for ancestral spirits and the storage of family heirlooms, while exuding the homeowner’s prestige. Some spectacular examples of homes boasting
extravagant roofs shelter the Minangkabau and Batak of Sumatra, the Toraja
of Sulawesi, and people in Sumba.12
House posts are vitally important in Indonesian construction. Four major,
symbolic posts support the central roof sections of traditional houses in Java,
Sumba, Sumatra, Timor, Lombok, and elsewhere. These posts each possess
unique metaphysical qualities and serve in ritual functions to maintain the
well being of the occupants and the structure itself.

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In Java, the rites of construction involve a precise, “gendered” joinery of
boards, known as mortise and tenon. This skillful wood crafting ﬁts together
shaped pieces explicitly symbolizing human sexual relations. The “male” component is the tenon pin, which inserts into the “female” socket. This complementary union of male and female symbolism creates a harmonious arrangement of structural elements, enabling a secure ﬁt. The joinery also brings
together paired opposites that resonate with procreation and balance. The
sexual nature of this symbolism, carrying on through architecture, may derive
from ancient lingga–yoni (phallus–vagina) rituals of the Hindu era in Java.13 In
parts of Indonesia not directly inﬂuenced by India, however, the male–female
dichotomy forms a central cosmological principle of indigenous beliefs.
Relative Status between People

The precedence and priorities Indonesians accord to relative status between people surfaces perhaps most in this chapter—as status determines and
continuously motivates the eccentric designs of Indonesian homes. In most
regions, when a person of higher or elder status approaches a porch or seating
platform (places to entertain visitors), those of lesser rank or age immediately
move from benches or central positions to lower or marginal seating levels.
Some even descend from the raised platform and crouch upon the ground.
At the same time, a chair may suddenly appear for an esteemed person, while
other visitors remain seated on a woven ﬂoor mat.
The Balinese, for whom caste forms a central means of identity, will tactfully
inquire of each other’s social levels by asking, “Where do you sit?” implying
the actual seating level they would occupy in a group of varying castes. Some
Balinese pavilions include a series of steps surrounding the structures, offering
seating options to appropriately accommodate people of differing social levels
and age groups, and provide a place for all. As emphasized, “That prestige is
a profoundly serious business is apparent everywhere one looks in Bali—in
the village, the family, the economy, the state. A peculiar fusion of Polynesian
title ranks and Hindu castes, the hierarchy of pride is the backbone of the society.”14 This deﬁnition of the “hierarchy of pride” could apply to all groups in
this volume—often most evidently in their built environments.
In eastern Sumba, where inherited social caste remains among the most
rigidly adhered to systems in Indonesia, similar seating divisions apply.
Sumba’s three-tiered caste system includes nobles, commoners, and slaves.
A lower caste person will always sit on a bottom step or at the far margins
of a porch of an elite home and some will choose to stand at some distance
from the house. Almost never do people of different castes eat in each other’s
immediate company. In fact, people of lower castes would feel intensely

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uncomfortable doing so. As in parts of Sulawesi, Bali, Java, Timor, and
other regions, people believe in the purity of bloodlines as a basis for nobility. Humans are born into ascribed, lesser castes based in folk notions
of biology. Often Sumbanese speak of low caste people as carrying “dirty
blood.” Thus, occupying space together within a household becomes an
uncomfortable matter, and the slave caste typically sleeps in a kitchen outbuilding with few amenities.
Homes in Indonesia (as in much of the world) are clear symbols of stratiﬁcation, that is, the social and economic inequalities in societies. Through
the archipelago, inequality has prevailed for many centuries in thought and
practice and persists as a taken for granted reality of the human condition.
For Westerners this is hard to understand, much less accept, in principle.
However, an oft-used quote considers status relationships in Bali (and could
apply to most of the archipelago); such are their importance that “they are
matters of life and death.”15
DESIGNS AND PRIORITIES
Across Indonesia, houses of ritual signiﬁcance are called rumah adat, meaning customary or traditional house—but also implying a ceremonial center.
These structures conform to speciﬁc (and often ancient) orientations, locations, building techniques, materials, shapes, sizes, and interior layouts. They
often contain sacred heirlooms, which further lend power to the structures as
clan centers and sanctiﬁed places.
Indonesians judge and admire houses by their size, the quality and elaboration of decorative carving or painting of their exteriors, and the eccentric,
complex architecture or dramatic stylistic ﬂair of overlapping or tiered roofs.
Conversely, interiors serve as the unseen, relatively unadorned domain of the
occupants. Although they might include highly sacred spaces and cosmologically signiﬁcant posts, carvings, heirlooms (pusaka), and household divisions,
they also delineate the mundane inner dimensions of houses and families. As
status symbols, interior styles and decoration of most traditional homes hold
less signiﬁcance than do exteriors.
Further, much remains secret of customary household interiors; such as
where people sleep and locations hiding their sacred possessions, family
designs for textiles, carvings, and other arts—not to mention unpredictable visits from ancestral spirits watching from high lofts. For such reasons,
Indonesians might appear uneasy at visitors “looking around” within their
homes and possibly recognizing places hiding heirlooms or upsetting the
social or spiritual order of things through hidden intentions or inappropriate
behavior.

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In many households, people prefer to sit outside on porches, raised platforms, or open-air gazebo-like structures generally called balé (or balai in
Indonesian, but with many local names). Balé function for entertaining
guests, and residents will quickly unfold a woven palm leaf mat called a tikar
at the sight of approaching visitors.
For decades the national government has been promoting simple, concrete, new homes. In regions of West Timor, entire villages were moved from
their historical settings and housed in these modern homes, following the linear direction of roads. This ended village life in symbolically signiﬁcant ways
radically changing the design and orientation of dwellings. The spread of
such houses follows a general policy of modernization that also concerns standards of health. Following this, people call these houses rumah sehat (healthy
house) in contrast to rumah adat.16 These modern structures usually include
a well or running water and a separate kitchen building. The most common
type is a single storey building with jalousie or opening windows to permit
ventilation. Roofs are low and often of corrugated metal. These dwellings are
similar to low-cost tract housing in the United States or Australia, built in the
1950s or 1960s. They usually contain a living room, two or three bedrooms,
and a small dining area. Bathrooms often attach to separate kitchen structures
behind the homes.

The classical middle-class Javanese home consists of three separate structures, each with its own roof. The pendapa (or pendopo) at the front of the
house is a large, open pavilion and distinctly public space for hosting guests
and performances. The second and smallest structure is called a pringgitan
and is basically an open, rectangular passageway to the back structure of the
house, but sometimes functions as a gallery for the performances of wayang
shadow plays. The third building is the dalem ageng (the inside space), and
the only section of the property surrounded by a wall and private in design.
This building divides into at least three separate rooms, enclosing the space
where a family actually lives. The central room (krobongan) is the most sacred in the house, as a reception site for the rice goddess Dewi Sri and a
place to honor ancestors. Rituals and the practice of meditation take place in
the krobongan. Bedrooms adjoin this central space. In this part of the house
human affairs manifest life’s sacredness.17 The kitchen (dapur) is comparatively insigniﬁcant at the back of this structure. A bathroom, or divided toilet
and bathing rooms, sit at a far end of the usually long, rectangular kitchen
building.
Javanese homes feature three kinds of roofs, each denoting social status.
The simplest is the kampung (meaning “village” but also a term denoting
“commoners” across Indonesia) roof of a basic pitch supported by four
central posts. The second type (signifying higher-ranking people) is called
limasan, which denotes ﬁve roof ridges forming a hip roof with an extended
peak on top, and including a verandah. The joglo roof distinguishes aristocratic homes. Much larger in size than those of lesser status, this style
features a hip roof with a tall peak at its summit, supported by four central
beams. A joglo home often includes tiled steps and a verandah around its
periphery and forms the central residence in a family compound of other
household structures.
Many Javanese also live in Dutch colonial houses, built across Indonesia
before World War II. These are fairly modest but well-made single storey
homes, plastered and painted in and out, with European shuttered windows
and steep, red-tiled hip roofs characteristic of homes in Holland. In urban
kampungs, many small, red-tiled homes share walls. Approaching Jakarta by
air, viewing the number of such roofs below is remarkable.
In town and country across Java, the modern tract-like house (described
previously) appears everywhere. Wealthier people live in larger homes, often
of concrete construction and similar to styles in the West. These structures reﬂect the growing middle and wealthy classes through the 1980s and
1990s. A trend also followed, involving artiﬁcially constructed outdoor walls,
meant to resemble cliff sides and complete with waterfalls and pools below.

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This style subsequently swept across Indonesia, and now on outer islands
cement environments adorn walls of public buildings and homes, including
sculpted animals and people.
Bali

Balinese persist in the integrity of their customary household designs.
Walled compounds enclosing a series of small buildings make up typical
Balinese homes. Rather strict rules dictate the location and orientation of
household structures. Compounds follow a directional aspect based in the
polarity of the concept of kaja-kelod. Kaja faces the inland, sacred (and sometimes actively volcanic) mountain of Gunung Agung, while kelod follows
the direction of the sea, which is “downward” in terms of spatial reckoning.
People sleep with their heads toward the kaja direction and the head of the
household resides in the most kaja building in a complex. The kitchen is
kelod, as are rooms with toilets and edges of a yard for housing pigs or dumping garbage. Kelod implies impurity, referring to a direction away from the
ultimate kaja site—the mountain. However, the term denotes a way, not an
ultimate destination, as the sea offers puriﬁcation for Balinese and certainly
not a kelod realm. Not only are numerous rituals performed at the sea, but
people caste the ashes of their cremated relatives into its waters.18
At least ﬁve distinct sections make up the family courtyard abode in Bali:
a tall arched entranceway, at least one bedroom with a front verandah, a
kitchen, bathroom, and granary. Some buildings might be without walls
on one side and open to a garden. The size and layout of the compound
indicate the wealth and social caste of its owner. While not highly elevated
Balinese homes do sit on piers on masonry bases, typically with ﬂoors covered in ceramic tile. This is likely an inﬂuence from India, which directly
affected Balinese culture in numerous ways.
Courtyard grounds are swept clean daily, and are lushly planted with ﬂowering shrubs and trees. The northeast corner (the site of the family temple) is
the most auspicious, whereas the southeast corner might host evil spirits and
usually remains vacant (although these directions might change depending
on which part of the island a family lives).19 Unlike many Indonesian homes,
a Balinese kitchen often sits at the front entrance of the compound, usually
to the right of the entrance, with an interior visible to visitors through a
large, ventilating window. Neighbors freely come to the kitchen entrance to
socialize with women cooking within.
Many homes are brick, often ﬁnished over with cement. Brick was also
a popular building material of the fourteenth century Majapahit kingdom of Java, and likely made its way to Bali centuries ago. Balinese create

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lavish entranceways with ﬂamboyantly carved, painted, and gilded double
doors, framed by wood or surrounding volcanic rock. Extravagant lintels—of wood or volcanic rock carved with ﬂoral patterns, animals, or
protective spirits—crown doorways. So much design, effort, and material
goes into doorway construction that they might function as freestanding
structures.
All Balinese buildings of holy character must feature a sacred roof form,
like a pagoda. This symbolizes the cosmic Mount Meru of Hindus, thus
people term such roofs meru. The more sacred the building, the more
layers of its roof. Temple structures of a household contain at least four
shrines. More mundane structures bear fairly simple hip roofs, covered in
grass or tiles.
Paths meander through Balinese compounds like a maze, sometimes following one direction, then suddenly another. These designs intentionally
confuse spirits stalking people or ﬁnding their way to buildings. As in cremation processions, taking swerves and sudden sharp turns protects the living
from unseen evils.
Dayaks of Kalimantan

Homes of the Dayak peoples in the interior region of Kalimantan are
of two types: a square, single-family structure or a rectangular communal longhouse. The famous longhouses (uma dadoq), contain walled sections of family apartments (amin), housing entire villages under one roof.
Headmen live in the center beneath a ceiling higher than others. Families
regard the back of their amin as sacred spaces to store heirlooms and
many cook within their apartments. Longhouses are also sites for ritual
performances among the Dayak. These windowless structures often continuously lengthen over time with slightly differing materials or heights
of piers supporting new additions. Because of this intermittent building
of sections, longhouses might present a rambling, uneven appearance.
A verandah runs the length of a longhouse as public space for inhabitants (which may number in the hundreds) to socialize and receive guests.
Kalimantan communities typically situate along its numerous rivers, with
village boats moored below.
A square Dayak home is much smaller and more exacting in construction,
occupied by one family. A simple home, however, becomes distinguished by
symbolic, elegant outside details. The wooden ﬁnials extending off the ends
of roofs of Dayak homes are extremely ﬁne and complex in their carving and
accentuate the upper tier. Usually a number of such homes surround a central
communal open pavilion.

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95

Minangkabau of West Sumatra

The soaring, “saddleback” roofs of the Minangkabau of West Sumatra
express the most digniﬁed and graceful in Indonesia. Both the Minangkabau
and the Batak of Sumatra have retained sloping roof forms that likely descend
from the Austronesians. This style appears through Indonesia and continues out into the Paciﬁc region. Such roofs distinguish Minangkabau “great
houses” (rumah gadang), which have become far scarcer than in the past.
For many centuries, Minangkabau society has been matrilineal, that is,
family lineages descend through women, and husbands move into their
wive’s houses. Women inherit houses and all ancestral land. While the
Minangkabau adopted Islam early—in the sixteenth century—the matrilineal system has carried on uninterrupted into present times.20 Minangkabau
society falls into two social levels of matrilineal clans: aristocrats and commoners. In elaborate homes of the upper class, even the ﬂoors tilt up at each
end of the building, mirroring the upward arching roof forms.
Historically, newly married women lived in one end of a great house with their
husbands, while older women past reproductive age resided at the other end.

Minangkabau house, with multiple gables covered with carved and
painted wood panels and upward arching roof ridges. Sections of the
wall are still in progress, later to be covered with carved panels. Courtesy of Andrew Causey. Used by permission.

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Thus, as women moved through their biological life courses, they also moved
through a house. A large central room functioned for all to meet within.
Mingangkabau houses require a mortised post and beam frame construction and include no nails. Pegs or wedges secure the frame in place and houses
rest on elevated piers. In some older homes, wall posts actually lean outward
to further accentuate the sloping rooﬂine. As elsewhere, customary roofs were
thatched, but the Minangkabau used strong, black sugar palm ﬁber said to
last hundreds of years.21
As on other islands, today people might maintain a prestigious family great
house to perpetuate status and identity but choose to live in a concrete contemporary home. Concerns of comfort as well as being “modern” motivate
moves to new homes. Yet, as elsewhere, older prestigious forms have become
pronounced again as status and identity symbols in homogenizing modern
times. Now numerous Minangkabau people erect rumah gadang with money
remitted by family members working in urban areas.
According to many, the arching roofs with pointed ﬁnials symbolize paired
water buffalo horns. The name Minangkabau relates to the Malay/Indonesian
term minang kerbau, meaning “winning water buffalo.” These valuable animals
live beneath houses and signify wealth while holding ritual signiﬁcance. Symbolic images of these creatures, however abstract, carry meaning in design. However, some have suggested that a particular duality, or incompleteness, shapes
Minangkabau cosmology, taking physical shape through architecture. The half
circle formed by roofs (through upward curving arches at each end) may symbolize the seen and unseen worlds. That is, the invisible arc of an invisible, upper
realm might complete a full roof circle.22 Minangkabau roofs thus may carry double meanings, simultaneously symbolizing an important animal and the cosmos.
Batak of Northern Sumatra

An Indonesian author who grew up in the Toba Batak region describes
something of his family house and those of the more wealthy in the early part
of the twentieth century: “Our house was a balebale, so we were obviously not
rich. It was all black inside from the smoke.”23 He continues:
That is, no more than a hut on four poles. Its walls were made of beaten bamboo and
its roof of paddy stalks (the ﬂoor was changed every year so it wouldn’t get holes in
it). The other houses were called sopa and ruma, which were much larger and more
beautiful; they were the houses of rich people. The ruma, for instance, had eight pillars. Its walls were made of carved wood planks and its roof was of black sugar palm
ﬁber. These houses had a single room, in which people ate, slept, and received guests.
The pillars were very tall, so that the space underneath the house could be used as a
pen for livestock, which made it rather “fragrant.”

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There was also a new type of house, usually called an emper (verandah). Its structure resembled the sorts of houses we see in large numbers in the city today.24

The new houses were likely, at that time, bungalows introduced by the
Dutch. The Batak include seven different regional groups, all of which cannot be discussed here. The elite homes of Batak also boast impressive saddleback roofs with outward leaning gables. Construction techniques resemble
Minangkabau methods, using posts and beams fastened by pegs or notches
and built atop piers. The Batak largely converted to Protestantism in the
nineteenth century, abandoning clan house rituals and instead building
smaller, single family homes. The rumah gorga (carved house) is the most
prestigious structure among the Toba Batak. Entered from beneath, these
homes are exquisitely carved and painted with deities and mythical creatures.
Carving on the exteriors is especially ﬁne and difﬁcult to carry out, using a
mallet to tap a razor sharp carving knife. Most gorga work consists of three
parallel grooves and requires master carvers.25
As elsewhere, rumah adat went into decline as people moved into simpler
or more modern houses, following modern trends and pressures. However,
as recently described:
In the early 1980s, there was a resurgence of interest in traditional house carving among
urban Bataks, many of whom worked for the provincial and national government.
Several public works projects in the towns and cities incorporated the traditional rumah
adat-style architecture, which necessitated the production of huge carved facades.26

These facades primarily adorned hotels and vacation homes in the Toba
Batak area. The quote above reﬂects two relatively recent trends in Indonesian
architecture. First, the national government has funded projects to revive or at
least present imitations of older regional styles to attract tourists and capitalize on
“ethnicity.” Second, groups throughout Indonesia have been returning to some
of their customary forms because modern designs lacked deeper meaning. These
older structural designs not only signify revived status symbols, following their
increased scarcity. They also proclaim tangible ethnic, clan, gender, religious, and
class identities and pride in a country plagued by political and economic woes.
Toraja of Sulawesi

The Torajan homeland is a mountainous interior region of South Sulawesi,
long isolated from the dominant ethnic groups of the greater region—the
Islamic Buginese and Makasarese peoples of the lowlands. Traditionally,
the Toraja lived in scattered mountaintop households and although they
maintained relationships through ritual exchange, Dutch colonial forces

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annexed the region under one political authority in the early twentieth century. As in other regions, particularly eastern Indonesia, Torajan society
consisted of three social levels, nobility, commoners, and slaves. After independence, many Torajans converted to the Dutch Reformed Church, following remaining missionaries from Holland. Today, although perhaps 80
percent are Christians, they continue with elaborate sacriﬁcial ceremonies
and the construction of fantastic clan homes.27
The Toraja tongkonan (meaning “sitting place”) of the nobility are among
the most dramatic of Indonesia’s vernacular architecture. These are “origin
houses,” places where relatives sit together to discuss matters such as disputes,
marriages, or inheritances. The upturned, soaring rooﬂines at the front of
these homes present an extraordinary structural achievement, seeming to defy
gravity. Among the Toraja, an accelerated effort has produced the elaborate
slope and height of frontal roof eaves, which require a freestanding outdoor
post for support. The extensive height and mass of these protrusions and
the interior support structures they require reduced the usable living space
of Torajan homes. Further, exteriors, especially the frontal northernmost
walls of tongkonans, became effusively embellished with carved and painted
designs, communicating wealth and prestige.
Although the majority of Torajans are Protestants, many still follow or
combine their faiths with their ancestral religion, Aluk to dolo, meaning “rituals (or ways) of the ancestors.” This is one of the few indigenous faiths that the
Indonesian government has recognized as a valid religion—largely because of
the value Toraja culture offered for tourism and the resulting revenue. As do
the Minangkabau and others, Torajans follow the male custom of rantau.
Many young men migrate to cities in Sulawesi or other areas of Indonesia
to work. These far-ﬂung sources of remittances have generated much wealth
for the people of Tana Toraja (Toraja Land), reinforcing their way of life.
Families receiving money from distant relatives put it to use in constructing
or maintaining their tongkonans and ceremonies. Thus, Torajans have prospered both from modern and customary phenomena.
Beginning in the 1970s, the Toraja attracted many international tourists
with their impressive and eccentric architecture and rituals. In fact, they became a sort of celebrity culture during the last three decades of the twentieth
century, as busloads of foreigners arrived to marvel at their dwellings and witness their fantastic pageantry at times of funerals.28 Tourism infused Torajans
with a stronger sense of their unique cultural value and stimulated a boom in
ceremonial life and house building. Today, people may live in more spacious,
modern homes, but still maintain their tongkonan, which may sit uninhabited. Even for those working far from their clan house, this remains at the
center of their ethnic and class identities.

When families from groups throughout Indonesia move into modern homes
(sometimes following government pressure), they often persist in building elaborate, carefully constructed, ritually sanctiﬁed houses right next door to their
comparatively bland, tract-like homes. Many Torajans have done just this.
Some Torajans now use their architecture and its related carvings in attempts
to achieve higher positions for themselves in local class, rank, and ethnic
hierarchies in their homeland. Following turbulent political–economic times
in Indonesia, artists now produce a new form of “carved paintings” calling
for peace between different communities (alluding to Christians, Muslims,
Chinese, and other Indonesian groups).29 In this way, elements of symbolically charged, customary Torajan architecture become expressive media for
personal strategies and contemporary political messages.
Grass “Beehive” Homes of Timor, Flores, and Savu

In contrast to elaborate homes, some abodes in regions of Timor, Flores,
and Savu are basically windowless, grass roofs extending below the ﬂoor

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platform to the ground, with virtually no other visible materials or design.
These houses resemble beehives, are extremely dark within, typically smoky,
and residents regard them as womb-like enclosures for living in safety and
privacy. Such homes bear sanctiﬁed posts, altars, and heirlooms representing
and honoring ancestors. In their interior obscurity, they appear unwelcoming
and indiscernible to outsiders, but familiar to those within. In the centers of
these dim, conical structures, women conventionally tend to forever burning
ﬁres, as pivotal and stable household presences—as within some traditional
homes of Atoni or Tetun peoples of Timor Island. Platforms of varying sizes,
heights, and signiﬁcance either form seats for men or bear heirlooms and
altars.30
Houses of eastern Indonesia adhere closely to principles of dualism—forming opposing, paired concepts signifying cosmological thought and symbolism of local belief systems. The most predominant and recurrent dualism
is male/female. While organizing much of life, this paired opposition also
maintains a mystery and tension between its differences. Among the Atoni
people of western Timor, house centers or entire interiors are symbolically
female, whereas exteriors represent males. Women, however, may not sit
upon male platforms within the house. As elsewhere, roof peaks or attics hold
sanctity, where agricultural altars reside with heirlooms. The Wehali people
of central Timor divide their homes into male and female spaces—both in
terms of inside and outside, and with posts marking boundaries between the
realms of men and women within a house.31
Indonesian Chinese Homes

Indonesian Chinese homes often differ from those of indigenous Indonesians.
Those called “shop-houses,” accent the merchant class status of Chinese in
Southeast Asia, especially in Indonesia. As noted by Jacques Dumarcay, in
The House of Southeast Asia: “In Southeast Asia, the Chinese house is essentially urban and its plan is thus dependent on the layout of the town.”32 Since
cities are crowded, so is housing and commercial spaces, which Chinese often
combine. Many live above or behind their businesses in long, narrow structures
resembling urban shops in the West. Often family members wander in and out
of the commercial and living spaces, and many will sit in front of their shops in
the evenings to socialize with neighbors or enjoy cool air.
When not too limited by space, Chinese homes include an open-air central outdoor courtyard surrounded on four sides by rooms. These dwellings
provide a pleasant sense of natural space and often caged songbirds, ﬂowering
plants, vegetable gardens, or even fruit trees enliven these family enclosures.
Households might shelter several family generations and contain considerable

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101

ﬂoor space. Because these are walled environments, people live in relative privacy from the outside.
Chinese Indonesians also occupy homes like those of others, such as Dutch
colonial houses and the common, modern types already described. In urban
areas, many wealthy Chinese live in newer, expensive homes in upscale sections of town. Their homes can be lavish, surrounded by high concrete walls
embedded with broken glass at the top to keep robbers at bay. Similar walls
provide protection for most urban residences of the middle- or upper-classes,
along with foreigners living in Indonesia.
THE LIVING HOUSE 33 AND HOUSE SOCIETIES
Bali: The Living House

The house as a living, breathing, and feeling entity embodies animist concepts of the world, including how sections of houses represent animate body
parts. As indigenous people and ethnographers have explained, houses from
a variety of regions possess parallels to human or animal anatomy, such as a
head, backbone, face, eyes, legs, vagina, a section that allows it to breath, and
so forth. This physiological symbolism characterizes houses in Savu, Timor,
Lombok, Bali, Sumba, and elsewhere.34
In 1937, the artist Miguel Covarrubias expressed of the Balinese house
concept:
The Balinese say that a house, like a human being, has a head—the family shrine;
arms—the sleeping quarters and the social parlour; a navel—the courtyard; sexual
organs—the gate; legs and feet—the kitchen and the granary; and anus—the pit in
the backyard where the refuse is disposed of.35

Balinese consider themselves as living microcosms of the Hindu–Balinese universe. This view also applies to villages, household compounds, and buildings,
which all follow a tripartite division: an upper world of Gods, a middle world
of humans, and the underworld. Pertaining to humans, divisions become head,
body, and feet—with the head always supreme. (Likewise, households of vastly
differing types throughout Indonesia frequently contain architectural anatomies
analogous to the three basic levels of the human body and of the universe.)
All structures in a compound correspond to the physical proportions of
the owner. The distance between the hands of outstretched arms on each side
of the body forms a basic construction measurement. Others include the distance from elbow to tip of the middle ﬁnger, the hands in various positions,
and the feet. These measurements are marked onto sticks and used through
out building and spacing between structures. Thus, the body provides the

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basic units of proportions within a family compound, creating similar, but
unique differences between households within a neighborhood.
Sumba: Persistent House Societies

Across Indonesia, especially the eastern islands, homes deﬁne the center
of people’s moral universes and identities. These regions fall under a type of
social system described as a “house society.”36 Such homes link directly to the
inhabitants’ ancestors and enclose their own sanctity, revered as places that
ensure the safety, stability, and health of a family or clan. Sacred wooden
posts (each of cosmological signiﬁcance) support these homes and sections of
the buildings symbolize male, female, public, private, forbidden, and sacred
spaces. As noted, “Ethnographies of South-East Asian societies … provide
evidence that ritual functions are inseparable from the house’s identity. What
are sometimes referred to in older literature as ‘temples’ were, in fact, simultaneously inhabited houses of a kin group.”37 In house societies one’s home
is indeed one’s temple.
In these Indonesian dwellings, people believe that ancestral spirits periodically inhabit spaces under roofs and critically observe their descendents
below. This is eminently so in Sumba, where inhabitants seldom risk improper behavior beneath the eccentrically high-peaked roofs (described by
an American tourist visiting Sumba in 1990 as resembling “Pizza Hut”).38
Propriety especially applies to sexual trysts. Extramarital or pre-marital sexual
activity usually occurs in socially neutral and spiritually unsanctiﬁed spaces.
These are simple, isolated garden huts, or even in the midst of high ﬁelds of
maize, as those involved would feel shame and even fear in their visibility to
ancestors.
In East Sumba, districts contain major villages of nobility and heads of
large kinship lineages, which include clan households, important megalithic
graves, and ritual centers. Despite more than ﬁve decades of belonging to a
nation—with its national leaders, regional ofﬁcials, modern institutions, and
ostensibly democratic ideology—Sumbanese have steadfastedly maintained
their caste and prestige systems. Usually at least four high-ranking families
occupy major villages, frequently located on hilltops. Noted for its highpeaked ancestral clan houses (uma bokulu), Sumba remains a characteristically animist island, although there is much overlap between Christianity and
the local Marapu faith. It was estimated in the mid-1990s that about one-half
of the population still followed animist practices, and yet more if including
Christian converts.39
Four ritual posts support the tall peaks (tiku) of roofs, which contain offering places for ancestors, family valuables, and male and female

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ancestral ﬁgures. These pinnacles also periodically host spirits of ancestors
during ritual events. Sitting on ﬂoors beneath roof peaks, skilled speakers
employ sacred ritual language (spoken in poetic, paired couplets), calling
Marapu spirits down to hear needs or witness important ceremonies of
the living.
Sumbanese perceive some clan homes as so forbiddingly potent with ancestral powers and life force (ndewa) that they fear living in them. A low
caste person then often becomes the sole caretaker. In Sumba and neighboring islands, the concepts of “hot” and “cool” represent spiritually menacing
or safe environments. Clan houses and the grounds surrounding them at
times become hot and must be cooled by rituals, usually involving the blood
of sacriﬁced animals. In a real sense “hot” implies forces of nature and the
supernatural while “cool” relates to local culture and the human realm. The
living must make their environments safe (or cool) by ritually appeasing the
spirits and the dead.
Opposing concepts (such as hot/cool, male/female, bitter/sweet, dark/
light) categorize and organize parts of a house. The masculine, right side of a
house remains reserved for the rituals and public matters of men. Women’s
domains occupy the left portion of a house, which include a bedroom, weaving areas, and often spaces behind the home.

A clan house roots a cosmological center for its members, providing a
shared physical building and genealogical identity for a social group (even
if uninhabited), while signifying “the starting point for each individual’s
location in time.”40 The term for Sumba’s animist faith, Marapu, signiﬁes
ancestral roots. In a highly stratiﬁed society of three distinct castes (similar
to Torajans), the clan house is one way in which “hierarchy and equality are
created, imagined and maintained by reference to ideas of origin and ancestry
as a ‘founding’ ideology.”41 Following this:
An apparently universal rule in South-East Asian societies is that house posts
always be “planted” (literally the term used in most instances) with their root or base
end down, the same way as the tree originally grew. Symbolism of “base” and “tip”
is highly elaborated in some Indonesian societies, and rules may even apply to the
placing of horizontal members.42

Torajan people of Sulawesi consider the southernmost room of their
homes as its root and a place to store their heirlooms.43 The Nuaulu people
of the eastern Indonesian island of Seram plant their house posts along with
sacred shrubs “always according to their natural orientation, that is, root end
ﬁrst … the house is thus considered to be, in a very real sense, ‘living.’ This
aliveness is often expressed in anthropomorphic terms.”44 On the eastern
Indonesian island of Buru, people express ideas about origin and cause based
on imagery of living plants or trees. Roots and trunks of trees and the young
leaves at the tips of branches form culturally signiﬁcant reference points
for these metaphors.45 Throughout Indonesians societies, this idiom of life
parallels dualisms of near and far, sacred and profane, and ancestors and
descendants, and deﬁnes various parts of a home.
In Eastern Sumba, distinctions between “trunk” and “tip” shape a dynamic
polarity in thought for a number of things, including households and lineages.46 While relative to concepts of “center” and “periphery” or “inner” and
“outer,” the trunk and tip notions also coordinate with values of time depth.
Thus, a trunk or old, established clan home holds eminence through its age.
During construction, the four sacred posts supporting a Sumbanese roof
peak become erected in a ﬁxed order in a “movement to the right,” with each
bearing a speciﬁc function. The ﬁrst pillar to be set is at the right front, the
site for divination. Here priests interpret signs through the organs of chickens
and pigs, then offer the animals to the ancestors.47 The post conducts information between two realms.
Noble clan heads bear the utmost responsibility for house maintenance.
Throughout Indonesia, roofs in particular but also ﬂoors or entire structures
need replacement about every 10 years. This obligation also falls to the people
regarding the clan home as the basis of their lineage, even if they live far from

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it. As on other islands, descendants working in distant regions typically remit
money to their families in Sumba in support of keeping a clan house standing. This also perpetuates the contributors’ inherent identities and ongoing
psychological well-being, perhaps all the more needed if they reside at great
distance from “home.” In fact, nobles may play upon their ranks while living
abroad, if to their advantage. Such posturing carries a doubled importance, as
conspicuous social status crucially concerns elite Sumbanese, wherever they
are. Following a revival in prestige of older status symbols, some clan homes
have been rebuilt grander than ever.
Common people of Sumba dwell in modest, single story houses with
plaited palm leaf or cement walls, both types typical throughout Indonesia.
These are conceptually “cool” without spiritual signiﬁcance. Although grass
roofs have historically sheltered homes across the archipelago, now many
people use corrugated zinc or iron. Metal roofs, however, radiate heat into
buildings and do not allow ventilation as does grass. These newer roofs result
in much hotter homes and the sound of rain on metal becomes extreme.
Nonetheless, such roofs are longer lasting, impermeable to rats and insects,
and appeal to many as low maintenance. For a time, even some large clan
homes underwent repair with metal roofs. These generally are falling out of
favor, though, due to increased household heat, an unaesthetic rusty appearance, and lack of customary value.
Tanimbar: The House as Status and Memory

The islands of Tanimbar, located among the Maluku chain (sitting between Timor and West Papua) historically contain a sort of “ultimate house
society.” Marriage and descent on this island has been varied and confusing,
thus houses mark clan identities more than do people. Tanimbar dwellings
customary sit in long rows, the most important of these called lolat. Lolat
designates structures deﬁned by the women from these homes given out in
marriage, typically in earlier times. That is, women who left their natal homes
to live elsewhere with husbands still remain the most important ancestors
in their houses of origin. Thus, a certain female ancestor deﬁnes a row of
houses, as bloodlines ﬂow from mothers and create connections between
homes. These female bloodlines carry names and only named houses may
be part of lolat rows. Greater and lesser rows exist in terms of social status.
People once believed that house rows could stretch to ancestors and the next
world; the sources of life. The house in Tanimbar society thus became the
focus of importance.48
Homes stand on piers and relatively simple, pitched roofs comprise
almost the entire structure. Buildings lack much adornment but customarily

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contained valuables within. Lolat homes once possessed exquisitely carved
wooden altars, as complex, abstract human ﬁgures with out-stretched arms.
These symbols of ancestral status are almost lace-like in curving detail and
were made nowhere else. Christianity caused people of Tanimbar to abandon
such altars and now most survive in foreign museums.49 Moreover, much has
changed regarding cosmological ideas, and many customary rows of homes
have fallen into decay. Yet, these unique structures and intricate marriage patterns still persist to an extent and notions of social status and lineage identity
are likely still important.
Savu: A Living, Nautical, and Shifting House Society

On the small island of Savu, between Timor and Sumba in eastern
Indonesia, houses consist of three platform levels, as is common elsewhere.
They also divide into parts named after those of living beings, such as a head,
neck, cheeks, a space for breathing, a chest and ribs, and a tail (implying
beings may always not be human). Like other Indonesian houses, those in
Savu possess spiritual force. Although most people of the island are Protestant converts, a Savu home (amu) is bestowed with hemanga (semangat in
Indonesian, signifying life force and spirit) through a series of ceremonies
during its construction. After these are complete, people regard the house
as a living entity, comparable to people, animals, or plants. A family house
grows and multiplies through its descendents.50 Homes contain, foster, and
emanate life. People of Savu also liken their island to a living being, with its
“head” to the west and its “tail” to the east. The geography of the island thus
divides into sections analogous to physical anatomy.51
The symbolism of the boat (perahu) also applies to Savu house layout.
Customary homes follow the shape of a bow and a stern and are called by these
terms. Thus, “like the members of a village, the members of a house form a
group of passengers on a perahu.”52 Savunese historically have believed that
their ancestors arrived from the west and that after death they will journey in
that direction by boat to the next world. People orient the heads of deceased
people and even sacriﬁced animals to the west—the direction of both origins
and ultimate endings. Savu houses also follow a “base” and “tip” orientation,
as in neighboring islands. The nautically symbolic “bow” of a house form is
also its “base,” associated with men—whose patrilineage descends from its
founder. The “stern” is like a “tip,” and relates to women, who move to their
husbands clan homes from elsewhere after marriage.
Savu houses divide into male and female sections, reﬂecting a basic
principle in eastern Indonesia. Household members all follow the founder’s
patrilineage, and any may enter the male half of a home. Relatively open and

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light, this section offers a place for entertaining visitors. The female household portion, however, is not visible from the male section and is dimmer
inside. Customarily, ceremonies held in its especially dark loft (storing food
and weaving yarn) remain exclusively and secretively female. All house posts
fall under male and female classiﬁcation, following their position.
Many Savu homes now follow the Indonesian modern, tract-like style. As
long-standing Protestant converts, many Savunese have abandoned or neglected their former house forms and related cosmology to a good extent.
Still, ideas integral to time-honored houses might apply in various degrees
and manners to these contemporary residences, as clan identities go on.
The House as Boat

Boat symbolism dominates homes and grave stones in diverse regions of
Indonesia. The meaning behind houses, that is, whether or not much of this
architecture literally intends to replicate a sea vessel, or whether boat-like
houses exist as metaphorical forms, has created controversy. Many if not most
Indonesians descend from ancestors who journeyed to their present islands
on boats. Seafaring vessels thus became visual symbols of origins along with
folklore of former homelands.
The Muslim Bugis, originally from Sulawesi, choose to live by sailing and
trading throughout the archipelago and beyond. They have been renowned
seamen and boat-builders for centuries. The Bugis in parts of Sulawesi follow a
three-tiered system of social levels, as in many parts of Indonesia. This system
remains more established in their homeland than after they migrate to other
islands. In Luwu, Sulawesi, houses contain central posts—points of power
(sumange, the local word for “spirit” or “liveliness,” similar to Indonesian
semangat) regarded as “navels,” paralleling the point of power in humans.
These must be guarded from harm.53 Thus, houses—most powerfully clan
homes of nobles—possess potency. Where Bugis have formed settlements
on other islands, however, the concept of sumange is less invested in a clan
home (and reﬂects that Bugis in these settlements were not likely migrants
from Sulawesi nobility). In simpler homes, and far from their homeland,
their sumange might be centered individually or even within separate parts of
a person and can be volatile and ﬂy off.54
The ﬁercely independent Bugis maintain strong notions of autonomy,
independent of a nation-state or province. Sea-faring Bugis long traded in
slavery, sea products, weapons, and bird’s nests (for soup). They historically
practiced the rantau, venturing afar, sometimes in permanent migration. For
many, their boats have become their only meaningful homes, allowing them
a certain freedom through mobility.

Bugis invest effort into boats (perahu) as they would homes. Built of teak
or ironwood, some tightly crafted vessels serve as cargo schooners (pinisi)
reaching 70 feet in length. These typically carry eight or more people and
might boast up to four sails. Elegant, sturdy, and meticulously made, they
signify pride and independence. Bugis also regard the sea as spiritually potent
and make ritual offerings to the aquatic realm before ﬁshing or setting out
on a journey. Throughout the wide Austronesian region, boats and homes
typically command similar metaphysical and ritual value among people who
sail the waters.
People originating in the Philippines and referred to as the sea-gypsies, or
Badjau (often Bajo in Indonesian) sail their boats over thousands of miles,
through the Sulu Sea (between the Philippines and Indonesia) into eastern Indonesia. Some Badjau still live an aquatic, nomadic life, but others
have settled near the sea on numerous islands. Wherever these people locate
themselves, however, they continue with their boat building, which requires
sophisticated craftsmanship. So often at sea, the Bajau hold speciﬁc ideas
about human orientations within their boats, such as sleeping crosswise
rather than lengthwise, for the dead are buried lengthwise in a cofﬁn made
of a boat sawn in half.55 As in Bali, associations with “right” and “wrong”
directions of orientation position a dwelling or the way one sleeps. Bajau
imbue their boats with similar values of a clan home, including a “navel” or
spiritual center.

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A journalist recently characterized sea gypsies of the Sulu Sea region as
modern buccaneers: “Modern buccaneers, they recognize no borders and
no rule but that of the open sea, as they smuggle goods and guns across
pirate-infested waters that form a sort of Silk Road of the Sea.”56 While this
swashbuckling portrayal is colorful, the Indonesian waters are rife with piracy
in some regions, and smuggling has characterized maritime life for centuries. Imaginably, as economic conditions have worsened in Indonesia, this
commerce has gained momentum. Thus, sea people sail through routes and
moorings to sustain their living and provide islanders with goods otherwise
unavailable.
Homeless People of Indonesia

In urban areas such as Jakarta, homeless people make up a substantial proportion of the population. These may be roadside food vendors who sleep
under their tables at night, pedicab (becak) drivers using their vehicles for shelters, or at the most impoverished level, those surviving beneath bridges, under
plastic scraps, or at garbage dumps. Many of these people suffered displacement
through community-insensitive urban renewal projects and others migrated
to cities to ﬁnd work (unsuccessfully). Some descend from families trapped in
conditions of urban poverty for generations. Drugs now pose a social problem
in Jakarta as they do elsewhere in the world, involving crack cocaine, methamphetamines, heroin, or snifﬁng chemicals (this, despite the fact that possession
or sale of illegal drugs carries the death penalty in Indonesia). Drug use has led
to further homelessness and mental illness, leaving people destitute. Worsening
this dilemma, drugs and prostitution have facilitated a growing aids epidemic
in Indonesia, largely in urban and tourist regions.
Under President Suharto’s New Order regime, “development” and “modernization” schemes and methods reached scandalously impractical and corrupt
levels. In Bali, plans for mammoth resort complexes of hotels, golf courses,
condominiums, the biggest luxury housing project in Asia, and “entertainment
parks” wreaked havoc upon the environment and disenfranchised sizeable
local communities. These visions of modern grandeur and prosperity completely ignored the wellbeing and rights of common, local people. As during
old Indonesian kingdoms (and by Indonesia’s ﬁrst president, Sukarno), the
erection of grandiose structures and monuments by those in power took precedence over the interests of the general population.
An immense luxury housing project devouring the land of many farmers had barely begun when the New Order ended. Water was to come from
draining Bali’s mountain lakes, which would have caused severe irrigation
shortages for rice farmers, disrupting their sustenance and culture in many

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places. At one point, a plan for the biggest statue on earth was underway.
Conceived of as the center of an entertainment park on the Bukit Peninsula,
Bali’s dry southern coast, this was to be higher than the Statue of Liberty and
plaited in gold—representing the Hindu god Vishnu riding on the back of
the mythical bird, Garuda. The economic crisis of 1997–1998 put an end
to the frivolous project. However, the Bukit peninsula’s limestone base has
been excavated and permanently disﬁgured by many such New Order follies. Moreover, money from these extravagant ventures was not destined to
beneﬁt local people, but to ﬁll the coffers of the national government and its
cronies.57
Jakarta has been rampant with socially devastating grand schemes. According to one report, between the years 2000 to 2005, the city evicted almost
64,000 urban poor for public–private projects and was threatening to evict
almost another 1,600,000.58 Earlier, in 1989, a community of 5,000 households—perhaps 30,000 people—received eviction notices, in order that their
neighborhoods become the site for the largest international trade center in
Indonesia. Although people protested, many moved. The government offered them ﬂats that they could not afford to rent, so many became homeless.
The kampungs (village-like neighborhoods of small homes) of central Jakarta
took on the appearance of bombsites, according to one report, once housing
an average of 1,000 to 2,000 people per hectare. Seventy percent of the city’s
inhabitants had been living in kampungs, yet hardly one such neighborhood
remained unscathed.59
In Jakarta and other cities, communities of people permanently live at
mountainous garbage dumps, where they scavenge for food, resalable items,
or rags. Such communities had become so commonplace and established that
one popular Indonesian television soap opera in the late 1990s dramatized
the lives and travails of a family desperately trying to survive at a city dump.
These dwellers of “garbage villages” were subsisting upon the refuse of the
more afﬂuent. The program became controversial as it highlighted the vast
differences in wealth in Indonesia. Further, garbage dumps had become entrenched Jakartan communities to the degree of providing valid settings for
televised dramas.
The governor of Jakarta called for a “clean up” campaign in 2001, targeting thousands of poor street workers, such as pedicab (becak) drivers (vehicles
increasingly illegal in much of the city), sidewalk vendors, street musicians,
as well as many families from impoverished makeshift settlements along rivers. By 2003, as many as 34,000 pedicab drivers lost work, as their vehicles
were systematically destroyed, depriving them of livelihood and shelter. Carts
and wares of 1,525 vendors were conﬁscated, and the number of demolished
street side stalls serving food rose to more than 21,000. By this time, more

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or less 50,000 people had been evicted from their shelters.60 The poor in
cities across Indonesia have endured similar miseries, which no longer can
be blamed upon the New Order regime. In fact, despite its many faults and
excesses, the New Order regime at least maintained some basic forms of infrastructural support for Indonesian people (such as clinics, bridges, and sewers), which have disappeared or fallen into neglect in the years since Suharto’s
resignation.
As of February, 2006, many left homeless by the tsunami of December,
2004 in Banda Aceh remained in tents or without shelter, despite international
aid. This echoed the situation of poor coastal people in Maumere, Flores, devastated by a tidal wave in the early 1990s, but never receiving sufﬁcient help
(or internationally contributed funds) to rebuild. Moreover, in remote regions
of Kalimantan or West Papua, large-scale, often multi-national logging or mining operations have forcibly relocated many indigenous people, sometimes by
violent means. In West Papua, or Irian Jaya, this has further fueled long-standing
movements for national independence from Indonesia.
In the wake of this type of blind destruction of habitats and lives, an insight by a poet from the other side of the world comes to mind: “Progress
might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long” (Ogden Nash).
This aptly applies to ill-conceived and corrupt schemes of “progress” across
modern Indonesia and much of the world, especially regarding common
people and their dwellings.
MOSQUES, TEMPLES, AND CHURCHES
Mosques

In predominantly Muslim Indonesia, the melodic call to prayer from the
summits of mosques (mesjid in Indonesian) ﬁlls the air ﬁve times a day, all the
more in cities where multiple calls from all directions resonate at once. Like
other religious architecture, mosques include design principles combining
Islamic and indigenous concepts of sacred structures. Modern, grand mosques
designed by Indonesian and European architects stand in major cities, as do
older ones echoing European colonial inﬂuences. The national mosque is the
Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta, built in 1984 as the largest mosque in Southeast
Asia and able to hold a congregation of more than 120,000 people. This
mosque reﬂects urban modern architecture of the period in many ways, except for two domes at the top: one a minaret and the other a voluminous
spherical structure covering the main prayer hall building.
The Minangkabau of Sumatra construct mosques with the exquisitely
carved walls and the “horned” roof designs of their homes. Yet these always
feature a minaret or spire of some sort on top. Four pillars support a central

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area, except in the simplest of mosques in small communities, which might
be one room. There must be clean water outside of any mosque, provided
by a pool or at least a water spigot, in order that worshippers wash their feet,
hands, and faces before prayer.
Following the tsunami of 2004, which left perhaps half a million people
homeless in the Banda Aceh region of northern Sumatra, the number of
mosques that survived devastation, including the Grand Mosque, stunned
many. Aerial photos of completely washed away communities show a number of mosques apparently standing intact. Regarded by many of all religions
as miraculous, this tremendously boosted the faith of Muslims in Indonesia
and the world over.
As the Koran does not speciﬁcally prescribe the architecture of mosques,
throughout the Indonesian islands they became locally interpreted structures,
eclectic mixes, or humble buildings, yet with a dome and minaret and an ampliﬁer for the prayer call. A mosque must provide enough space to gather the
surrounding Muslim community within it. People enter the side of the building in the opposite direction of Mecca. Facing this entrance, marks upon
a wall indicate the direction of Mecca and worshippers orient themselves
so that their heads face this way. If a Muslim prays away from a mosque,
and many do as prayer occurs ﬁve times daily, he or she will always orient
the head toward the proper direction. This orientation is similar to Balinese
concepts of sacred and less-than-sacred in ways they build residences and
temples—looking to a spiritual center and away from its peripheries.
Temples

Temples in Java are called Candi. In Bali people refer to them as Pura or
Candi, although the latter often signiﬁes the entranceway. Classical Hindu
and Buddhist temples—and sometimes a combination of the two faiths in one
structure—follow models of Mount Meru, the Hindu center of the universe
and home of the gods. Hindu temples contain a lingga (phallic symbol) at its
sanctiﬁed core, while Buddhist temples enshrine a statue of the Buddha. The
earliest temples in Indonesia were Hindu, built high upon volcanic mountains
in central Java. Symbolism of the mountain or the stupa (an up reaching, conical structure) resonated with indigenous notions of the piety of mountains and
ancestors. The number of ancient Indonesian Hindu and Buddhist temples is
too great to even mention here. Most exist in Java; others in Sumatra, Bali,
and Kalimantan.
Some time in the eighth century a.d., the world’s largest Buddhist shrine
of Borobudur began to rise in central Java. This ﬁnally reached completion
in the ninth century, under rulers known as the Sailendras of Central Java,

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allied historically with Sumatran Srivijaya. This extravagant and immense
tiered “mountain”—embellished with miles of intricate bas relief Buddhist
scenes, countless carved panel depictions of everyday life, and impressive
stupas—still stands intact and visible across the plains for miles. At its base it
measures more than 370 feet and rises to 114 feet. The hundreds of engraved
stone panels of Borobudur document in detail how Javanese looked and lived
in ancient times. Many of these images appear astonishingly similar to dress
and activities in Java to this day, from market scenes to cock ﬁghts.
The architectural and artistic mastery of Borobudur arguably surpasses
any structures produced in Europe in the same era. It remains Indonesia’s
ultimate temple and one of the most impressive religious ediﬁces in the
world. Borobudur was dedicated to telling visually of the many lives of
Buddha (Jataka tales) and architecturally symbolizing the path to enlightenment. The monument expressed this journey through an ever-rising walkway
circumventing the entire structure in several tiers. Walls border this upward
route, meticulously chiseled with episodes of Buddha’s various incarnations,
the glories of local kingdoms, and all aspects of human activities. The most
profane views of life border the bottommost level. The episodic progression
of stories ends at the ultimate open-air plane of Borobudur. Here, all imagery
subsides except for stone Buddhas sitting within bricked stupas facing out at
the vast landscape.

Unique among temples, Borobudur encases the top of a hill, originally
augmented by ﬁlled soil to support the temple foundation. While the
monument provides entrances on all four sides, the main entry stands on
the eastern section, leading into walls of bas-relief narratives. Borobudur
was designed as a ten-stepped ascending pyramid culminating at the top.
This follows Mahayana Buddhist scriptures—ten stages of lives on earth
following moral and compassionate ways of living embodied in the ideal
of a “Bodhisattva”—and depict Buddha’s own succession of incarnations.
Coincidentally, the Sailendra king at Borobudur’s inception was the tenth
in his dynasty.
Numerous magniﬁcent temples stand in central Java, such as at Prambanan,
Mendut, and the Dieng Plateau, and in Bali, such as Besakih, inﬂuenced by
Buddhism and Hinduism. Like Borobudur, they often contain richly illustrative carvings and symbolic, upward-reaching architectural details, visually
striving toward enlightenment. These skyward arches, profusely detailed architecturally and decorative carvings, were commissioned by various rulers
and tell different stories of Buddha and Hindu gods and goddesses.61
Many Indonesian and foreign visitors travel to these temples and carved
images, including tourists and religious pilgrims. Some monuments retain
their spiritual function and likely hold greater signiﬁcance in a nation currently weakened by economic woes, political instability, natural disasters, and
recent terrorism.
Rulers originally constructed temples of stone, but later of brick and tile
beginning in the fourteenth century Majapahit era. These holy structures
not only proclaimed devotion of kings, but also asserted their own divine
authority. Impressive architecture then legitimized or extended their power
by attracting larger followings. While temples followed Indian inﬂuences
to an extent, much of the design and carved imagery was vividly Javanese.
Otherwise, the impact of these sanctuaries, however impressive they might
have appeared, would have been far less powerful among the population.
A crucial aspect of these structures was that “[t]he architects who designed
and built the great Hindu and Buddhist temples of eastern and central Java
were masters of perspective effects. They manipulated changes in scale and the
positioning of architectural elements to create an illusion of great mass and
structure.”62 This especially applied to the imposing temples at Prambanan
and the Dieng Plateau, Java.
In Bali, temples stand at the very heart of society, culture and history.63
Estimates of the number of temples in Bali exceed 20,000. For this reason,
any visitor to the island can usually see people carrying offerings, colorful
processions, or even elaborate ceremonies such as cremations. Each village
contains at least three temples, and larger villages often hold many more.

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There are also special temples for different organizations—neighborhoods,
state temples, rice irrigation societies, and so forth. These structures are repaired or rebuilt following strict speciﬁcations. When a group of Balinese
resides away from their island, such as policemen or civil servants, they will
usually construct a temple for themselves.
Most of Bali’s temples are not old, but amid the humid, tropical climate and
monsoonal rains, they quickly appear so. Depending upon the type of rock,
brick, or cement used for temples and their carvings, erosion can be rapid and
carved ﬁgures may appear ancient when they are 10 to 20 years old. As so
much in Bali includes carved lintels and guardian ﬁgures, a general appearance
of antiquity (which charms foreigners) pervades the island’s architecture.
The most revered temple in Bali is Besakih, sitting nearly 3,280 feet above sea
level, on the southwest slope of the holy mountain, Gunung Agung. This mountain was also the realm of departed ancestors for Bali animists before Hinduism
arrived. People called the Bali Aga still practice a pre-Hindu belief system and
some live near this mountain region. Besakih includes a dramatic stairway to its
open-topped, imposing tiered gateway. The complex within contains approximately 30 pagoda-like temples (meru). The Dutch restored this temple in the
early twentieth century, after years of neglect by warring kingdoms.
Balinese also chiseled temples and shrines from solid rock walls, such as the
famous “Elephant Cave” (Goa Gajah), perhaps originally a site for Mahayana
Buddhists by the eleventh century or local Balinese priests. Buddhist or

Hindu hermits may have used these caves for solitude and meditation, but
much of their history remains a mystery. Goa Gajah’s spectacular rock face
features a large demon-like creature (likely to repel menacing spirits), whose
mouth becomes the cave. Fantastic animals and plants etch deeply into the
surrounding wall. This is one of Bali’s most ﬂamboyant religious sites.
The ﬁfteenth century temple, Tanah Lot, perches on a rock outcropping
in the Indian Ocean off southern Bali, accessible only at low tide. Legend has
it that a traveling Hindu priest founded the temple for privacy, permitting
him to carry out spiritual practices undistracted by local ﬁshermen. One of
Bali’s holiest sites, this small temple draws many pilgrims and tourists. Tanah
Lot has become an icon of Bali internationally, with photographs of its meru
roofs against an ocean backdrop.
Churches

According to one scholar, in 1854 the Dutch Governor General divided
up the Lesser Sunda Islands of eastern Indonesia for the missionaries. The
Catholics were permitted Flores and the middle region of Timor. The Protestants got most of the rest of the archipelago, including Bali.64 As most of
the population of Indonesia by that time had adhered to Islam (or in Bali
Hinduism) for centuries, missionaries faced an easier task converting animists
of outer islands. Nonetheless, Christianity did take hold in parts of Java, Bali,
and Sumatra.
Approximately 10 to 13 percent of Indonesians are Christians, following
numerous denominations. The Protestant majority, belonging to the Dutch
Reformed Church, adapted the new faith to local cultures. Catholic congregations exist on most islands, especially Flores. More recently, other Protestant
denominations have spread, such as Lutherans, Methodists, Evangelicals, and
others. The number of Evangelical, Fundamentalist, and Mormon missionaries from the United States is a more recent phenomenon, resulting in many
new churches.
Churches throughout Indonesia tend to resemble either the European or
American types of architecture of a founding missionary or the religious buildings of indigenous people. Some village churches are simple wooden structures
with a cross on top while urban regions contain large, impressive constructions. The Catholic Church in Denpasar, Bali features many basic elements of a
Balinese temple, including carvings and a tiered, meru roof. The Bali Protestant
Church in Seminyak, however, follows a more European design, without any of
the usual Balinese embellishments. In fact, the church bought a bordering tourist resort and replaced many of the Balinese stone carvings of gods and creatures
with cement deer and decorations decidedly not local. In Sumba, a Catholic

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church consists of modern, concrete architecture but displays a cement statue
of a beckoning Christ near the roadway, clad in local ikat costume.
PUBLIC BUILDINGS AND MONUMENTS
Public Buildings

The colonial bureaucracy introduced public buildings to Indonesia that
were not of a religious or aristocratic nature. These include any number of
buildings like those in Europe. Architecture of government ofﬁces, banks,
post ofﬁces, schools, hospitals, and so forth throughout Indonesia tend to
be either of Dutch colonial style with red-tiled roofs and concrete walls (and
often in states of disrepair) or generic single or multi-storied concrete structures built between the 1950s and the present—resembling mundane urban
architecture in much of the world. Much construction after independence
reﬂected Dutch modernism of the times. Yet many older buildings remain,
such as Chinese shop-houses and Dutch colonial structures on commercial or
residential streets in cities, typically alongside newer buildings.
In appearance, the skyline of Jakarta could be almost anywhere. During
the 1990s, an immense amount of large structures rose, including shopping
malls, government buildings, expensive and largely multi-national hotels, ofﬁce buildings, and high-rise apartments. At the same time, infrastructure did
not keep up with building, causing frequent power blackouts and ﬂooding.
The boom in urban building made an immense amount of money for favored
businessmen and contractors, while taking little else into account—such as
trafﬁc problems, air pollution, waste disposal, the demise of kampung communities, and the costs of maintaining these enormous new monuments to
Indonesia’s modern face. Building got far ahead of itself, and some of the
high-rises remained at least half vacant or began to deteriorate.
Deﬁning one particular style of Indonesian urban architecture is impossible.
However, an Indonesian scholar notes, “the ‘International Style’ continues to
prevail resulting in the suppression of local elements, which are all too often
entirely absent from the most prestigious sectors of modern Indonesian cities.
Critics have referred to this as a ‘crisis of cultural identity.’”65 While sometimes
of prize-winning design, the modern urban architecture of Indonesia also provides an immediate and graphic contrast between the rich and poor.
Public Monuments

Many Indonesian public monuments celebrate heroes of liberation or religious ﬁgures and on some islands these might be locals. Others take form as
realistic policemen at intersections to remind people of trafﬁc laws. In Bali, a

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giant concrete baby was constructed near a road intersection, following years
of reports by local people of the sounds of crying children from the small,
vacant lot. Recent Balinese monuments (intentionally visible on route from
the airport) are immense, baroque affairs celebrating ancient Hindu gods.
After national independence, older monuments in Jakarta came down and
new ones went up, in the crude style of Soviet realism. President Sukarno
was exceedingly fond of statues and ordered one built that mimicked the
Washington monument. As his popularity waned from his extravagances,
people referred to it as “Sukarno’s last erection.” Another monument of liberation in Jakarta distinguishes a busy trafﬁc circle. This “youth monument”
portrays an elevated, large, and muscular male peasant holding above his head
a large circle, engulfed in ﬂame. Modern Jakartans, especially youth, often
irreverently term this heroic image “Pizza Man.” People regard the statue as a
landmark by which to give directions through the city’s trafﬁc clogged streets.
This is not to belittle the heroism of the Indonesian national revolution, but
to illustrate how political monuments often take on unintended meanings in
local, popular culture.
The famous Taman Mini Indonesia (“Beautiful Indonesia in Minature”)
arose through the direction of President Suharto’s wife, inspired by a visit to
Disneyland. This took place amid great protest, displacing several neighborhoods and countless people whose homes were razed for the project. This was
a monument to the New Order slogan “Unity in Diversity,” which features
miniature ancient and recent Javanese monuments, impressive replicas of the
customary styles of homes throughout Indonesia’s 26 provinces, an immense
pavilion, a shopping center, a small lake, hotel, and a waterfall, among other
attractions. The project cost many millions and the opening ceremony in
1975 included Imelda Marcos. The theme park attracts hoards of people each
year. As a tourist site, it is a successful monument to Indonesia.
In the small town of Soe, West Timor, a giant monument of a man dressed
in government uniform stands by the roadway, with one hand held forward
in salute. Painted and resembling an immense mannequin, the ﬁgure exalts a
recent, regional politician. As did kings of old, this man saw to his enormous
efﬁgy to proclaim his power. However, in this case the monument is a personiﬁed facsimile, more Stalin-like than Indonesian in style. Leaders across
Indonesia have erected similar modern monuments to themselves.
At many small airports of the outer islands, life-size monuments of a man
and woman dressed in indigenous garb greet visitors as they enter the terminals. These are often bordered by beds of ﬂowers and serve to represent
something of the identity of locals to those arriving to their islands. People
fashion monuments of horses, leaders, ﬂowers, or any number of images at
village entranceways, asserting local powers and histories.

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BURIAL STRUCTURES
The value placed upon ancestors and ceremonies honoring the dead
throughout Indonesia surfaces dramatically on landscapes. Graves determine
central elements of village design or provide places to visit for spiritual strength.
As part of a vast megalithic arch spread by Austronesian culture, Indonesian
regions such as Nias (Sumatra), Toba (Sumatra), Central Sulawesi, Sumba,
and Flores contain old, immense grave markers. Some are simple table-like
structures with four stone legs (dolmen). Others are elaborately designed
megaliths, carved with a range of ﬁgures and designs. Yet others resemble
graves in the Western world. Burial structures reﬂect the layers of religious
thought and diversity of the archipelago.
Islamic Graves

Muslim graves usually consist of stone or cement (and more recently
include tiles), with a distinct head marker and an elongated section under
which the deceased lies buried. They somewhat resemble graves in Europe
and North America. The section over the body may be an elevated block
(sometimes resembling a building) or a ﬂat rectangular section near ground
level. Depending on where Muslim graves exist in Indonesia, they might lie
near mosques, outside of towns in graveyards, or within villages. Styles of
head stones differ greatly, from simple rounded pillars, to ﬂat, inscribed tablets, to forms reminiscent of earlier Hindu–Buddhist inﬂuences.
Tombs also enclose the Islamic dead. These can be as large as buildings or
smaller structures accommodating one person. Denoting people of importance,
tombs hold exalted meaning. As noted of tombs on Java, “Tombs embody
an authority from the past and through this embodiment offer a source of
power. … Individuals on Java visit tombs with their special intentions, often at
times of personal crisis, in order to place themselves in relationship to a personage
of the past.”66 Tombs of Islamic saints are great mausoleums, with caretakers and
speciﬁc practices (such as meditation) required by people wanting to visit them.
Numerous religious leaders, devotees, and presidents of Indonesia have visited
tombs of certain saints to receive spiritual guidance and renewed power.
The most recent and renowned of these was President Abdurrahman
Wahid, who in 2001 visited the tomb of a long-departed spiritual leader
before deciding to ﬁre part of his cabinet. Although this caused alarm among
politicians, many Javanese understood his actions, some believing that such
spirituality signiﬁed a true leader. Wahid’s frequent visits to tombs and
absences from cabinet meetings and government affairs, however, eventually
earned him a vote of no conﬁdence, thus ending a short-lived presidency.

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Tombs and Graves throughout the Archipelago

The Kenyah people of Kalimantan entomb their dead in structures called
liang—often mirroring the design of their homes but with more elaborately
carved, up-curving wooden extensions along the roof tops and eaves. Some of
life’s essentials accompany the deceased within these structures, such as salt,
a sword, tobacco, and eating implements. Brass gongs and pottery decorate
the outside to denote wealth. Kenyah construct liang downstream from their
villages, to prevent the dead from returning to the realm of the living.
A number of groups erect tombs to resemble clan homes. Some Christian
Batak construct concrete tombs, mimicking the details of their traditional
homes. These are often deeply etched with patterns and brightly painted,
with a cross and name of the deceased in front. Minangkabau of western
Sumatra traditionally have built a rumah gadang over grave sites, complete
with arching, elegant spires on a saddleback roof. In parts of Toraja Land,
Sulawesi, miniature tongkonan mark burial sites of the dead. Indeed, the dead
must be housed in manners similar to the living in these societies.
The famous graves of the Sa’dan Toraja (named after a nearby river) long
have been chiseled caves of hillsides, which entomb the departed (wrapped in
many ikat and silken textiles) and feature his or her carved wooden efﬁgy at
the entrance. Some of the caves are sealed with carved wooden doors, often
containing imagery of the symbolically important water buffalo. These caves
reach soaring heights and transporting a body and efﬁgy to the higher sites
requires tremendous group effort and agility.
Grave types have changed drastically with the times in some, if not
most, regions. Batak monuments were once as large and spectacular as
those of Sumba, with carved ﬁgures riding an elephant or lion. These were
hewn from quarries and dragged to the burial site, asserting the wealth
and power of the family of the deceased. Since conversion to Islam and
then Christianity, many Batak have abandoned these sculpted grave markers. Now, from various reports, in addition to their house-like tombs the
northern Toba Batak erect tall, concrete tugu (meaning memorial monument) in their place, sponsored by relatives working in cities. These appear
as modern monuments—geometrical and upright, bearing a statue of the
clan founder on top. Yet, they still emphasize wealth and status and even
expanded, worldly knowledge in their contemporary design.67
The island of Nias sits off the west coast of Sumatra and long maintained
a culture that differed from those on the mainland. Megalithic statuary on
this island reached immense heights. Sculptors created unique, distinctive
stone pieces of all uses that came to designate prestige of the living and ﬁll
village grounds. Ancestral efﬁgies, however, held central importance. Some

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Nias statues rose more than three meters high, rivaling the stone heads of
Easter Island. People also dragged huge, chiseled stone slabs to burial sites.
Following conversion to Christianity in the early twentieth century, these arts
and practices went into decline in Nias.
Nowhere in the archipelago do graves exceed the effort, expense, and
ongoing reverence as in Sumba. These consist of large, chiseled slabs weighing
up to 60 tons, dragged to a burial site by great numbers of people, then
carved and ﬁnished with a curved stele (headstone) called a penji. This might
symbolize a banner, a sword hilt, or even an unfolding fern. Often ﬁnely
carved, penjis are relatively small in comparison to the megaliths they adorn.
Consequently, many have been stolen and sold to international collectors
over the past century. Headstones often also include ancestral ﬁgures, stylized
trees, mythical creatures, or animals. The other end of a burial slab might
feature a smaller motif or remain unadorned.
People bury their dead in excavated chambers beneath the gravestones,
often large enough to hold many. More than 100 ikat fabrics might enfold
the deceased, depending upon rank. In eastern Sumba, the ground must be
cooled with the blood of a sacriﬁced horse before a body can be carried safe
from evil spirits to the grave chamber. In the west of the island, people sacriﬁce water buffalo for this purpose. In recent times, stone dragging carries
renewed prestige, leading one anthropologist to note a “‘ritual inﬂation’ in
the size, decoration and elaboration of new funerary art forms”68 in Sumba.
People will drag a stone for distances as great as 5 miles over hilly terrain. This
sometimes involves ﬂoating a slab across an ocean inlet atop logs for part of
the distance. Sumbanese invest immense amounts of time and expense into
funeral markers and their surrounding rituals. These continue to persist and
evolve in grandness of scale and elaboration.
In parts of Indonesia, graves consist of simple concrete slabs embedded
with relatively cheap commercial blue or white square tiles. These permit
comparatively inexpensive undertakings for the less afﬂuent and often sit just
outside of households. Yet, however humble a grave might be, it will bear
indispensable value to those burying their dead. In the city of Kupang, West
Timor, in 1999, several such graves ﬁlled the modest yard of a poor trader,
the smaller ones memorializing the family’s lost children. Crosses and blue
tile headstones served as markers for these sites.
NOTES
1. Tom Therik, Wehali—The Female Land: Traditions of a Timorese Ritual Centre (Canberra: Pandanus Books, published in association with the Research School of Paciﬁc and
Asian Studies, The Australian National University, 2004), 316–317.

27. Kathleen Adams, “Taming Traditions: Torajan Ethnic Imagery in the Age of Tourism.” in Converging Interests: Traders, Travelers, and Tourists in Southeast Asia, ed. Jill Forshee,
with Christina Fink and Sandra Cate (Berkeley: Center for Southeast Asia Studies, University
of California, 1999), 251–252, from which I borrow here.
28. See Adams, “Taming Traditions,” 249–263. See also Eric Crystal, “Tourism in
Toraja,” in Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism, ed. Valene Smith (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 109–125; and Toby Volkman, “Visions and
Revisions: Toraja Culture and the Tourist Gaze,” American Ethnologist 17 (1990): 91–110.
29. Kathleen Adams, personal communication, January 30, 2006.
30. For more information on the Atoni, their unusual homes, and culture see Clark
Cunningham, “Order in the Atoni House,” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde 120
(1964): 34–68.
31. See Therik, Wehali, 165–176.
32. Dumarcay, The House in Southeast Asia, 62.
33. This borrows from the title of the book by Waterson, The Living House, cited in full
above.
34. See Waterson, The Living House, 131–132.
35. Miguel Covarrubias, The Island of Bali (New York: Knopf, 1937), 88; also cited in
Waterson, The Living House, 130.
36. See Claude Levi-Strauss, The Way of the Masks (London: Cape, 1983), 185–187, for
ideas of the French anthropologist who developed this social category.
37. Waterson, The Living House, 46, paraphrased here.
38. Jill Forshee, personal observation during ﬁeldwork.
39. Jill Forshee, Between the Folds: Stories of Cloth, Lives, and Travels from Sumba (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000), 18, 208 n.10.
40. Janet Hoskins, The Play of Time: Kodi Perspectives on Calendars, History, and Exchange
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 14.
41. James J. Fox, “Introduction,” in Origins, Ancestry and Alliance: Explorations in
Austronesian Ethnography, ed. James J. Fox and Clifford Sather (Canberra: The Australian
National University, Department of Anthropology, 1996), 2.
42. Waterson, The Living House, 124.
43. See Toby Volkman, Feasts of Honor: Ritual and Change in the Toraja Highlands
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 47.
44. Roy Ellen, “Microcosm, Macrocosm, and the Nuaulu House: Concerning the
Reductionist Fallacy as Applied to Metaphorical levels,” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-en
Volkenkunde 142, no. 1 (1986): 2–30.
45. Barbara Dix Grimes, in Origins, Ancestry and Alliance: Explorations in Austronesian
Ethnography, ed. James J. Fox and Clifford Sather (Australian National University, Department
of Anthropology, 1996), 199–215.
46. See Gregory Forth, Rindi: An Ethnographic Study of a Traditional Domain in Eastern Sumba (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff) for a detailed description of values placed upon
sections of an East Sumba home.
47. See Tjahjono, ed., Indonesian Heritage, 43.
48. See Susan McKinnon, From a Shattered Sun: Hierarchy, Gender, and Alliance in the
Tanimbar Islands (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001).
49. See Waterson, The Living House, 161–163.
50. See N. L. Kana, “The Order and Signiﬁcance of the Savunese House,” in The Flow of
Life: Essays on Eastern Indonesia, ed. James J. Fox (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1980), 228–229.

Rybczynski, Witold. Home: The Short History of an Idea. New York: Penguin Books, 1987.
Tjahjono, Gunawan, ed. Architecture, Indonesian Heritage Series. Singapore: Archipelago Press,
2001.
Waterson, Roxana. The Living House: An Anthropology of Architecture in South-East Asia.
London: Thames and Hudson, 1997.
Wijaya, Made. Architecture of Bali: A Source Book of Traditional and Modern Forms. Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 2003.

5
Cuisine and Traditional Dress
Cuisine and traditional dress across Indonesia share clear similarities and
remarkable differences. As people increasingly migrated between islands over
the past century, now eateries serving distant cuisines appear by the sides of
roads on remote islands. Regarding dress, people buy Javanese factory-made
sarungs, shirts, slacks, skirts, or blouses in markets across the archipelago. Many
men and women wear sarungs at home, as they are inexpensive and comfortable. Urban Indonesians have adopted modern dress for many decades, and
denim jeans and T-shirts are established casual wear among young people
everywhere. Yet local cuisines and dress still thrive and even have resurged
in many places. Traditional dress and food have gained renewed distinction
in modern times, as people strive to maintain their ethnic, clan, gender, and
class identities.
Bali, Java, and Sumatra, inﬂuenced by India, court cultures, HinduBuddhism, and Islam early on, offer some of the most sophisticated, subtle,
and spicy foods of Indonesia. These islands also produce elegant and
reﬁned fabrics for clothing, including silks and weavings of silver and gold.
Ceremonial costumes in Bali or Sumatra may be multi-layered and splendid,
comparable to the archipelago’s ﬁnest cuisine. In some places, traditional
dress involves complex textiles whereas food remains simple, receiving
relatively minimal attention. For example, many eastern islands maintain
highly developed textile traditions and people take special care in ways of
making and wearing cloth. Yet local foods frequently offer little diversity
or ﬂavor in these regions—likely because these were not court inﬂuenced
societies. As times change everywhere, so do ways of dressing and eating.
While essential for survival, food and clothing fundamentally denote social

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rank, wealth, and more recently a modern savvy following global fashion
trends. This chapter will describe customary ideas and manners of cuisine
and dress in contemporary Indonesian contexts.
CUISINE
Most foreign visitors to Indonesia vividly remember their ﬁrst “sense”
after arrival—the multiple and exotic aromas of foods wafting through
the air from houses and open-air eateries. Reﬂecting centuries of incoming inﬂuences, many ingredients ﬂavoring Indonesian cuisine originated
from around the globe. The hot chili made its way from Mexico through
Spanish conquest in the Philippines, along with green beans, tomatoes,
maize, and potatoes. Portuguese introduced peanuts and sweet potatoes
from colonies in Africa and Brazil, along with papayas and pineapples.
Dutch brought cabbage, carrots, and cauliﬂower. Centuries before,
Chinese imported soy products, stir-frying, noodles, and domestic pigs.
Earliest known inﬂuences arrived from India, introducing onions, garlic,
eggplant, and spices like coriander, cumin, and ginger. Most notably,
India also brought the ﬁne culinary art of making curries, which Indonesians adopted and recreated with ingenuity and zest. Living amid native
and abundant coconut palms, people could freely access milk forming the
basis of curry sauce.
Apparently, Indonesians used turmeric, coconut, cassava, palm sugar, salt,
tamarind, and ﬁsh paste before the introduction of other foods. Fruits grew
far more abundantly than vegetables, including mangoes, bananas, durians,
jackfruits, rambutans, citrus fruits, and mangosteens. Some fruits, however,
functioned as vegetables, as people ate them green. Indonesians ﬂavor and
cook un-ripened jackfruits, papayas, bananas, and mangoes as they would
vegetables. Many enjoy the sautéed, bitter ﬂowers of the papaya plant and believe they prevent malaria. Fish may have been the most common meat-like
protein of early Indonesian diets, along with wild pigs, dogs, and chickens.
Austronesians probably introduced wet rice farming to some islands as far
back as two to three thousand years ago.
As the staple grain of Indonesia, rice feeds millions three times a day and
carries immense religious importance. In most of the eastern islands, cassava
(ubi kayu in Indonesian) formerly provided the main carbohydrate, and
people still mix bits of this root into the rice they now eat. Many believe this
enriches the grain, but often mixing cassava or maize (corn) enables people
to stretch a rice supply until the next harvest or to when they can afford to
buy more.

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Rice and Life
During its many centuries of association with man, rice in raw and cooked form has
assumed special meanings, much as in the Occident, bread has become “the staff of
life,” the food to be ceremonially “broken.”1

Rice represents a fundamental spiritual, social, and nutritional basis for
much of Indonesia. Balinese wear small dabs of rice on their temples and
foreheads after prayer. Life’s passages inspire festive accompanying rice dishes
or sculptures, and most everywhere rice carries spirit. Indeed, Bali’s complex
irrigation systems for growing rice shaped land and culture, while sustaining strongly cooperative communities for many centuries. Likewise in Java,
wet-rice cultivation involved tightly functioning political systems early on,
developing into great polities such as Majapahit. Dewi Sri, the rice goddess
recognized in Bali, Java, and places beyond, holds prominence among deities.
Balinese honor Siwa (adopted from the Indian god Shiva) as god of the soil,
supporting the growth of everything, including rice. Siwa and Dewi Sri work
in complementary balance with one another.
While the “Green Revolution” (launched in the mid-twentieth century)
allowed far more rice production throughout Indonesia, it also created problems for numerous farmers. Suspecting Dewi Sri’s disapproval, President
Suharto went to the extent of modifying national policy toward new pesticides,
banning the most toxic following reports of their poisonous environmental
effects. Pesticides often destroyed creatures (such as ducks, frogs, shrimps,
and minnows) integral to fertilizing rice paddies and controlling crop-eating
pests and malarial mosquitoes. The expense of chemical fertilizers, moreover,
was beyond the means of the poor, who had formerly relied upon manure
and composted plant material in ﬁelds.
Nonetheless, Indonesia is now self-sufﬁcient in rice whereas it once was
the world’s largest importer of the grain. In many regions people follow
modern agricultural methods and plant imported, high-yielding rice hybrids.
Yet farmers in some areas maintain their time-honored methods and plant
varieties. Many people express that they do not like the texture nor taste of
the newer rice hybrids and much prefer their older types. This echoes older
values upon precedence and origins, as in clans, houses, metaphysical beliefs,
and personal identities.
In the minds of most Indonesians, consuming rice is essential to living.
Many regard a meal without rice as nonsustaining and incomplete. People
often express that they will weaken and become sick if deprived of rice and
complain that they do not feel “satisﬁed” (kenyang) after any type of meal

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excluding it. They marvel at how Westerners might ever become kenyang,
as they see them eating small portions of rice or none at all. For the
Indonesian majority, rice bears crucial cosmological signiﬁcance. Regarding culinary etiquette, some advise that it is acceptable if guests leave other
sorts of food uneaten, but not to consume all of the rice on a plate is next
to sinful.
As so much effort goes into its planting, growing, harvesting, husking, and
accompanying ritual offerings, rice maintains a position of sanctity among
foods. Likely for reasons of fertility, rice carries an association with women in
much of Indonesia, who often plant and then harvest the grain, using small,
curved knives. These cutting devises take different forms across the islands.
Women cup them within their hands while cutting so as not to cause shock
and fear among the rice sheaves. This method also respects the rice goddess
and related spirits.
Rice paste forms the sculptural medium for brightly dyed and detailed
Balinese offerings at ceremonies. It also becomes the basis for sweets eaten
at these events. During a cremation procession, family members sometimes throw rice toward by-standers to ensure good feelings along their
passage. In Java, a cone-shaped rice form called nasi tumpeng (“mountainshaped rice”), communicates passages in life—such as the seventh month
of pregnancy, weddings, and birthdays. Any number of adornments or
dishes may surround this cone. After a death, relatives serve the dish sliced
in half down the middle, then reorient the sections to symbolize that life
and growth have come to an end. In many parts of Indonesia, fertility of
rice crops connects to dead relatives and pageants honor rice and ancestors
in speciﬁc ways. People symbolically feed the dead through ceremonies
(including rice offerings), and in turn receive their blessings through fertile
crops.
Rice marks important times of the year for people, and countless beliefs
and rituals correspond with its planting, growth, and harvesting. In West
Sumba, people fear that others can steal the souls of their growing rice by
dancing and singing with magic baskets. Describing this belief, one account
also remarks that “[f]or this reason, the months when the young rice crop is
growing are shrouded in a strict silence.”2
Types of Indonesian rice include natural colors of black, red, and white.
Indonesians also like to tint rice using the turmeric root, producing nasi
kuning, or “yellow rice,” favored at festive events. The Balinese specialize
in a rich pudding made of black rice, coconut milk, and palm sugar. Red
rice holds special value in drier, less fertile parts of Indonesia, where people

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131

believe it provides greater nutrition than other types (likely true, as it remains
un-husked).
Flavorful Fare

Popular almost everywhere, people prepare noodles (mie) in a number of
ways. Unlike rice, they do not carry religious signiﬁcance. Consisting of rice
or wheat ﬂour, Indonesian noodles might be very ﬁne or similar to fettuccine
in shape and size. Rarely served without seasoning, noodles become bases for
stir-fried dishes mixed with bits of meat or vegetables. Noodles also make for
ﬁlling, economical soups. Often they appear in mixed forms as side dishes
with rice. Mie goreng (fried noodles) is one of Indonesia’s most widespread
simple dishes, along with nasi goring (fried rice). These fast, wok-cooked,
economical meals typically include inexpensive ingredients or leftovers to
enhance them.
Often a molasses like sauce, called kecap manis (sweet sauce) ﬂavors these
dishes, or else a spicy hot sauce called sambal. The word “ketchup” in English
comes from the similarly pronounced Indonesian word kecap (“sauce”). In
recent decades, monosodium glutamate (MSG), has become popular across
Indonesia. This ingredient now goes into many foods, especially those
stir-fried. Many simply call it rasa (“ﬂavor”).
As does Thai cuisine, the ﬁnest of Indonesian cooking requires subtle combinations of ﬂavors and complementary dishes. Seasonings include lemon
grass, ginger, shrimp paste, chilies, pureed peanuts, coconut milk, lime leaves,
lemon juice, garlic, shallots, tamarind, laos root, cloves, nutmeg, coriander,
salt, and a variety of ready-made sauces. Indonesian meals at their best offer
a wide and colorful range of distinctively different dishes, always served with
an abundance of rice. Curries and soups carry explicitly Indonesian tastes
and scents, often including chicken, goat, beef, or seafood. For non-Islamic
peoples, pork is a favorite meat. Kangkung, a common Indonesian vegetable
served with meals stir-fried or stewed, is an aquatic green like watercress.
Shrimp crackers (krupuk), stir-fried peanuts, along with small potato or
corn fritters embellish many plates. In fact, condiments and side dishes pull
together all elements of meals.
Sauces called sambal are one of Indonesia’s extraordinary culinary art
achievements. Of endless variety, many people make their own favorites.
Preparing sambal involves pounding chilies with oils, shallots, garlic, sugar,
salt, shrimp paste, and other seasonings using a mortar and pestle. Some prefer
to fry pounded pastes to deepen their ﬂavors. Sambals can be sweet, salty,
sour, garlic-seasoned, or extremely hot with chilies. They may be smooth or

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chunky with ingredients such as shallots, chilies, tomatoes, and orange peel
(similar to Mexican salsa).
Indonesians make brilliant use of soybeans, producing both tofu (tahu) and
tempeh. Tempeh is a Javanese invention of fermented, compressed soybeans.
Typically sold in public markets by the slice off of a long rectangular block,
this soy product far surpasses tofu (and meat) in protein content. Tempeh is
cheap and often referred to as “poor people’s meat.” However, it incorporates
well many spices and sauces, is especially good fried, and people of all classes
enjoy it in Java, Bali, and beyond. Tempeh often becomes a condiment, in
small pieces deeply fried with shallots and bits of potato. Also inexpensive and
available in public markets, Tahu (tofu) develops from fermented soybean
paste and originates from China. Like tempeh, cooks primarily fry tahu, serving it with other dishes. Many eat both tahu and tempeh as snack foods sold
in stalls or from small carts, often with a bit of sambal or a few small chilies.
As walking while eating constitutes rudeness in much of Indonesia, people
usually consume snacks on the spot where they buy them or take them to
where they can sit.
Certain renowned recipes please locals and foreigners with their unique
ﬂavors and visual appeal. These largely originate from the western islands.
Pungent, curry dishes might contain any number of combinations, such
as chicken, beef, ﬁsh, eggplant, beans, or young jackfruit, and are among
Indonesia’s tastiest foods. Usually made with beef, rendang originated in the
Minangkabau region of West Sumatra. Part of an intricately spiced, piquant
cuisine called Padang (after the port city of the region), richly seasoned
rendang becomes tender through stewing in coconut milk and appears at
special events. Of course, rice, vegetables, and condiments round out this
dish. Balinese gado-gado (meaning “mixture”) consists of a salad of greens,
compressed glutinous rice slices, cooked vegetables, peanuts, bean sprouts,
tahu, tempeh, and so forth—covered with puréed peanut sauce containing
coconut milk and spices. This usually includes no meat. Saté is Indonesia’s
answer to the Turkish shish kebab but includes only meat. Most frequently
chicken or beef coated with a spicy peanut sauce and impaled upon a slender
wooden skewer, this quickly cooks on open grills. Saté ranks among the most
popular of street foods.
Then there are limitless variations upon rice dishes, a few of which follow.
Nasi campur (mixed rice) offers a mound of white rice surrounded with a
mixture of meats, seafood, vegetables, potato or corn fritters, sambal, krupuk
crackers, peanuts, and tahu or tempeh. This attractive dish displays a medley
of Indonesian foods and condiments. Nasi Padang also provides ample white
rice with blends of spicy, curried meats and vegetables distinctive of West

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Sumatran food. Nasi goreng (fried rice) incorporates almost any ensemble of
palatable ingredients fried in a wok, ﬂavored and colored with red sambal.
People in Flores, Sumba, and Timor eat nasi jagung (corn rice), a simple
rice dish cooked with bits of ground maize. Lemper consists of glutinous rice
simmered in coconut milk, steamed with meat and spices, and then wrapped
in tubes of banana leaf. These resemble small, green Mexican tamales and
vendors sell them in Java and elsewhere. For take-away meals, people eat
nasi bungkus (wrapped rice), containing any mixture of rice and foods in a
large banana leaf package. These often include a “spoon,” also fashioned from
banana leaf.
Martabak stands offer a sort of large crepe enfolding spicy meat or sweet
peanut and coconut ﬁllings. They open in the evening and their food descends
from recipes introduced by Arabs. While usually a snack, people might take
several portions home to add to a meal. Martabak offers variation from rice,
as it often includes wheat ﬂour and Westerners frequently enjoy this food.
Places to Eat

While in urban regions some middle-class people have taken to Western
fast foods, most still prefer Indonesian diets and never seem to abandon rice.
Throughout Indonesia the most common eating-place long has been the
warung. This is a small, inexpensive, streetside food stall where cooks quickly
prepare meals, often in a wok. Common fare also includes soups and curries
stewing in large pots and ready to eat. Customers typically share benches at
simple tables set with condiments such as salt, kecap, chilies, and sambal.
Awnings or tarps shelter these small eateries from the elements. Warungs range
in size, quality, specialties, and remain popular places for all sorts of people
to eat quickly and even very well. Most provide take-out food wrapped in
banana leaves.
Warungs often serve cuisine from different regions, such as Padang food
from Sumatra and Javanese dishes. Padang warungs attract people through
the diversity and ﬂavor of their dishes. Commonly, Indonesian bus stations
feature bordering Padang warungs. Prepared early in the day and then served
at room temperature, Padang food is always ready to eat. These modest eateries appear in the most remote places of Indonesia, as do small stalls called kios
(borrowed from the word “kiosk”), selling soft drinks and packaged snacks.
Individual vendors on most islands also sell food in the evening, as they squat
beside small lanterns—offering simply peanuts, roasted corn, or fried bananas.
“Fast food” is not a new phenomenon in Indonesia but centuries old.

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In Java, modest hand-pushed food carts called kaki lima (meaning “ﬁve
legs” of supports when standing still) travel residential streets. Their vendors
sell soup, fried noodles or rice, sweets, fruit juices, sodas, ice cream, and so on.
Each peddler emits a uniquely identifying sound to broadcast his arrival and
fare. Thus, bells, drum beats, twangs of metal wires, horns, gongs, or distinctive
vocal chants enliven streets and lanes—notably after dark or early morning.
Often people await signals of speciﬁc carts to buy breakfast, snacks, or an evening meal. Indonesians comment that they realize the time of day by the sounds
of speciﬁc kaki lima, heralding their specialties through neighborhoods.
As Indonesians love snacks, they also like sweets. Some warungs specialize in es (ice) dishes. Composed of ﬁnely crushed ice mixed with fruits and
colorful bits of sweet agar jelly, sweetened, canned condensed milk drenches
all ingredients, adding richness. Es dishes are Indonesia’s version of ice cream
sundaes and the young ﬂock to these stands. Vendors and kiosks also sell
candies, cookies, ice cream, and batter-fried bananas.

Many warungs serve neighborhoods as social centers to meet and talk.
People exchange local gossip, discuss rising prices, and express political
opinions. During the 2004 political campaigns, one determined candidate
opened warungs—bearing his name on the front awning—in every Indonesian
province; thus, they were called Warung Wiranto. Warungs now cater to
separate social classes. The more upscale resemble outdoor restaurants, with
private tables, chairs, and elevated television sets. Some warungs play lively,
popular music to draw in fans.
A restaurant in Indonesia is a rumah makan (eating house) and some
warungs catering to the middle class resemble them. Rumah makans can be
humble places to eat, but many are beyond the means of common people.
Indonesian Chinese families often run restaurants serving a mixture of
Chinese and Indonesian dishes. Rumah makans are common in cities and
towns but rare in village or rural regions. Warungs and kiosks, however, seem
to exist wherever there are people.
Food, Beliefs, and Behavior

Everywhere cuisine interconnects with metaphysical and practical beliefs
and social behavior. Throughout Indonesia, people talk about food often,
sharing recipes, expressing likes and dislikes, comparing ritual feasts, discussing crops and livestock, or complaining of high prices. The sheer number
and variety of roadside food sellers reﬂect the paramount concern of eating
in Indonesian daily life. Preparation, tastes, and customs of eating vary across
the islands, as do the values placed upon certain foods. Sociability connected
to food also ranges from communal events to singularly private acts.
Families might normally eat an evening meal together or separately in
different parts of a household. Lunch is usually an informal affair—to the
extent that in some areas individuals simply will grab a handful of cooked rice
from a kitchen and eat it immediately. Formality or shared activity of eating
relates to each society and class. In many areas people eat with their right
hands, but most Indonesians use a tablespoon. Breakfast often consists of rice
porridge with coffee or tea. Indonesians do not usually linger over meals as do
Westerners, and often conversation waits until after eating.
When eating together, custom frequently determines that the head of the
household or oldest male initiate dining. When guests are present, etiquette
requires that the host or hostess express, “Please eat” (Silakan makan) before
anyone makes a gesture toward doing so. Some Indonesian families share
meals around a table, some dine together on a tikar mat, and some eat alone
in private at the back of a house. Moreover, food and eating can relate to
real or metaphysical dangers, as people fear poisoning, curses, or spirits

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entering their open mouths. Many Indonesians do not speak while eating
for such reasons, and sometimes water must wait until after a meal.
Food throughout the islands incorporates greater systems of belief. As discussed, offerings and rituals ensure fertility and all crops rely upon the good
will of ancestors, nature spirits, or deities. So with livestock, which affords
both sustenance and status to owners. Many island people use metaphors
of plants or animals as concepts—in house design, clan organization, ritual
prayers, and the reckoning of space and time. Elderly people without birth
records typically estimate their age by events such as the year a certain mango
tree was planted. In Sumba, water buffalo correspond with their owners’
biographies. The animals a man begins to raise after marriage represents the
moment in time in which he reached adulthood.3
Certain taboos apply to foods, the most common one upon pork for
Muslims. In animist regions, people often follow strictures against eating
particular “clan animals.” Following these ideas, creatures historically
assisted the living or were even original ancestors. While not forbidden,
other foods may bring on disease or relapses in malaria, if too cold or too
hot. Foods might also transmit dangerous curses, and people will avoid
anyone rumored to have caused illness repeatedly through offering meals
or even water.
Various food taboos apply to pregnant women. In parts of Timor, expectant mothers must refrain from eating hot meals and goat meat, also classiﬁed
as “hot” and thereby dangerous in Tetun society.4 In some regions, any food
held too close to a pot of indigo dye then becomes “hot” and perilous to
pregnant women, as is the dye itself. In eastern Indonesia, new mothers avoid
spiritually “hot” foods, yet often sit for days warmed by a household ﬁre.
On the other hand, in central Java during the slametan ritual celebrating
the seventh month of pregnancy, the expectant woman ceremoniously eats a
hard-boiled egg as a symbol of the actuality and health of her unborn child.
Thus, certain foods might ensure healthy reproduction.
At funerals in many regions, all attending must have eaten to their
contentment before a body can be carried safely to its grave. This relates
to the Indonesian concept of kenyang, or satisfaction mentioned above. To
leave anyone at critical ritual events unsatisﬁed with the food might cause
bad feeling, arouse harmful spirits, and invite supernatural problems. Sumba
funeral fare includes boiled pork and rice, distributed in deliberately generous
servings. Feeding guests and spirits is a serious matter across Indonesia. At
shamanic ceremonies of the Meratus Dayak of Kalimantan, people prepare
sweet rice desserts to host the spirits, shaped into boats, airplanes, ﬂowers,
and lines of uniformed soldiers to represent both pleasant and powerful
possessions. In this way, fearsome spirits (dewa) are appeased.5

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To refuse hospitably offered food constitutes a grievous insult in Indonesia.
Among the Meratus Dayak people of Kalimantan, “[b]y refusing food—and
by extension, social connection—one becomes vulnerable to accidents, such
as bites by poisonous snakes or centipedes, as well as to illness.”6 A visiting
European “eco-tourist” to Sumba in 1994 created alarm and fears of witchery
in several villages where she camped in her tent. A vegetarian and fearful of
germs, she ﬁrmly refused all food and drink from villagers, while shunning
interaction. Her inexplicable unsociability gave rise to suspicions of madness
or sorcery. This tourist entered local folklore, as “the women who would not
socialize.”7
Foods also carry political functions, sometimes for the better, but also
creating unforeseen problems. As the national government centers in Jakarta,
Java, it attempted for decades to deploy Javanese models of “civilization”
by establishing wet-rice agriculture throughout the islands. In some regions
this worked well, but in others environmental and social conditions were
most unsuited to this farming method. This policy accompanied the New
Order’s transmigration (transmigrasi) of people from over-crowded Java
to less populated islands. Despite the use of pesticides, the introduction of
wet-rice farming in some regions signiﬁcantly increased incidences and strains
of malaria, encephalitis, and dengue fever through the amount of standing
water rice required. This provided ideal breeding environments for mosquitoes carrying these diseases. Unlike Balinese, many peoples unaccustomed
to growing wet-rice were unaware of how to control mosquitoes through
animals suited to rice paddies.
In the Tetun region of Timor, the gebang palm feeds people and carries
ritual value, while the sago palm is the food of nobles. In this dry, mountainous region, people prefer dry-rice growing to wet-rice methods promoted
by the national government. Tetun claim that the latter method is not the
way of their ancestors, thus locally invalid.8 For these people, dry rice holds
precedent ritual signiﬁcance while wet rice does not. Indigenous farming
methods carry on through the long-standing spiritual value of foods and the
practicality in producing them. As do local lineages, so do native plants carry
on metaphysical worth. Likewise in Sumba, the more recently introduced
white Brahmin cattle carry no ritual value, as compared to long-established
species of horses, pigs, chickens, and water buffalo.
Recent Food Trends

In modern Indonesia, many have taken to fast foods and especially to
instant noodles called “Super Mie” (Mie means “noodles”), similar to “Top
Ramen” available in the United States. Sold everywhere, Super Mie crosses

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all ethnic and class boundaries and feeds urbanites and rural villagers. Now
other noodle brands compete and offer a plethora of “ﬂavor packets,” some
catering to more elite customers by offering “gourmet” varieties. As noted in
a June 2001 article in Latitudes, “[m]ore than the national anthem or even
the national language, the instant noodle unites.”9
Modern notions of fashion and global inﬂuences stimulated new ideas of
prestigious eating in Indonesia. In numerous urban settings, American fastfood restaurants became elevated locally to status domains of young elites.
Well-dressed, dating couples frequented McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried
Chicken in Jakarta. In Java and Bali, Indonesians dining at such franchises
often demonstrated savoir-faire to others in ordering and eating American
“junk” food. Moreover, the bright lights and sterile, plasticized interiors of
these restaurants exemplify an international standard of modernity.10 The
seductive lure of “being modern” (moderen in Indonesian) in Indonesia
especially entices the young and the upwardly mobile. Yet, as Adrian Vickers
notes in Being Modern in Bali: “In Bali, as in most of Southeast Asia, the
desire to embrace the new [is] not new.”11 So with cuisines, as people select
from incoming foods and build upon what has sustained them.
In recent times of political and economic crises, numerous Indonesians
have returned to farming and raising animals with renewed vigor. Realizing
the dangers of over-reliance upon tourism, foreign aid, modern global trends,
or their own government, many now increasingly value their customary foods
and ways of producing and preparing them. Further, following extensive
international disdain of the Bush administration, Indonesians have become
far less admiring of things “American.” Thus, McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried
Chicken, Pizza Hut, and the like may come to bear different symbolic meanings than in the past. It remains to be seen how the international chaos following the terrorist attack on New York’s World Trade Towers in 2001—and
the United States’ subsequently controversial invasion of Iraq—will reshape
Indonesian ideas and trends regarding the Western world. In particular,
the United States, Australia, and Britain may come to bear an altered status
compared to previous years.
DRESS
Everywhere in Indonesia, manners of dress carry fundamental social
importance. Even as customary dress currently wanes in some regions, people
aspire to appear clean, neat, and fashionable. The Indonesian term rapi means
“neat” but also implies a modern sleekness in dress. In cities, people typically
wear contemporary, factory-made clothing, similar to styles in the West,
albeit comparatively conservative. Indonesian women dress modestly and
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custom of covering the hair by wearing a jilbab—a cloth leaving only the face
exposed—has grown in popularity in recent decades in parts of Indonesia.
This may be in response to perceived excesses of modern popular culture and
a renewed ethnic and religious identity. The custom has recently increased in
Indonesia, reﬂecting attitudes of Islamic peoples toward the Bush policies in
the Middle East.
Nevertheless, numerous urban youth (male and female) sport jeans, T-shirts,
body piercings, tattoos, and spiky dyed hair, and they attend rave parties. In
fact, T-shirts and jeans constitute standard youthful garb throughout the
archipelago and have for some time. “Style” has been called a visible reference
point for life in progress.12 While styles of traditional dress still integrally link
to prestige and power, knowledge of “newness” in an expanded, volatile world
often matters most in recent status contests.
Yet style might arise and proceed from any direction, and novelty does
not necessarily issue from the Euro-American world. Diversely modern Asian
trends affect Indonesians: from heroes of Hong Kong martial arts action
ﬁlms; to songs, dances, and fashions of India’s spectacular Bollywood movies;
to head wraps worn by Indonesian youth following the contemporary dance
style called joget. Joget moves to the lively Indian and Arabic inspired rhythms
of dangdut, a Malay/Indonesian pop music craze. Through mass media and
ever changing fashions in urban centers, more than ever before Indonesians
enjoy access to stylistic trends from both hemispheres.
People throughout the islands proclaim identities through their dress, involving
deeper personal and social meanings. Traditional garb has not remained static in
design, but reﬂects individual choices in aesthetics and lives revealing changing

University students wearing jilbabs in central Java. 1990. Courtesy
of Jill Forshee.

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times. This likely always was so, although to a far lesser extent than in today’s
world. Across Indonesia, many dress in combinations of new and old ways:
selectively modern while retaining essentials of their homeland customs.
Where Threads Still Bind

Customary dress across Indonesia communicates binding cosmological
principles, group identities, and local systems of meaning and power. It
enhances cultural ideals of masculinity and femininity, in multiple ways. Still
thriving through the islands, some traditional styles gained renewed value in
recent times. However, as textile scholars note: “Precisely because it wears
thin and disintegrates, cloth becomes an apt medium for communicating a
central problem of power: Social and traditional relationships are necessarily
fragile in an impermanent, ever-changing world.”13
Traditional Indonesian apparel chronicles people’s histories, secures social
relationships, and communicates to others. Such dress widely ranges between
islands in speciﬁc motifs and techniques, but most always emerges from
local designers, weavers, and dyers. In some regions, imported cloths, such
as ancient Indian trade fabrics (patola cloths) or Javanese batik head cloths,
became adopted into costumes regarded as locally traditional. These may
symbolize formerly prestigious foreign trade connections or assertions of
descent from royal courts on other islands.
Still, “tradition” usually survives through changing—incorporating aspects
that update and enhance its current relevance. Traditions rarely function over
time as rigidly inadaptable dogmas. As does life, they constantly undergo ﬂux.
Otherwise, old ways die out, as they have in much of the world. In so-called
developed countries, people tend to regard “traditional societies” as completely
static—following resolutely ancient, unalterable forms of culture. Moreover,
when such societies demonstrate creative innovations reﬂecting their current
ideas of the world, outsiders might then label them as “spoiled” or “no longer
authentic,” as though they must remain frozen in time to be genuine.
Romantic or stark deﬁnitions of the traditional give short shrift to nonWestern peoples, whose lives are as dynamic and innovative as people elsewhere
(not to mention “modern,” which carries unique interpretations the world
over). The difference in customary societies lies in certain tenacious principles that maintain traditions. These include reverence toward ancestors,
belief in the metaphysical, and the successful carrying on of clan lineages—
values that have lapsed in much of the industrialized world. Precisely because
Indonesians have remained so continuously adaptive and ingenious, they
have been able to brilliantly maintain traditions important to them in the

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face of modern pressures. This applies to all aspects of cultures but becomes
visible and individual through manners of dress.
Clothing throughout the archipelago historically derived from local plants
and barks. Thus, cloth, dyes, and looms intricately connected with indigenous
ecologies and cosmologies. Manners of dress long have signiﬁed people’s identities, their comings and goings, what they regard as meaningful, and diverse
social interactions with outside peoples throughout the past. Traditional
dress also reﬂects ongoing tensions between the past and the present. In recent times, customary dress interweaves and convolutes the traditional and
the modern, blurring these categories. As surviving traditions are never inert,
so it goes with Indonesian clothing.
Most customary Indonesian dress bases upon a sarung or a kain. Sarungs are
cloths sewn together at either end to form a tube. People then step into, pull

up, then wrap and tuck this cloth around their waists, sometimes adding a
sash. Sarungs and kains always extend to the ankle, except when worn by men
on certain islands, where they reach the knees. In Java, Bali, and other islands
both men and women wear sarungs, which vary in their patterns and manners
of fastening. On islands like Sumatra, Sulawesi, Flores, Sumba, Timor, and
beyond, traditional sarungs differ. Of heavier, handwoven textiles, they are
narrower and longer in shape. Only women wear these tubular garments—
long enough to pull up over the breasts and fasten, or to draw up to the waist
and tuck.
Kain means simply “cloth” in Indonesian. In dress it refers to a lengthy
stretch of unsewn fabric, typically 3 meters in length. This might be wrapped
and cinched in multiple ways and worn by men or women in many places,
involving all levels of formality. Women often wear a batik kain with a matching selendang—a shawl draped over one shoulder. They use kain for practical
needs, like carrying babies by tying the cloths into a sling across their shoulders.
Kain often functions as backpacks, as women carry purchases from the market
in them, or female vendors bundle their goods to market in this cloth.
Traditional wear visibly accentuates cultural ideals of masculinity and femininity across the islands. Women’s hips become emphasized and attractive to
men through the way they appear in sarungs or kains. Men in diverse regions
express that they only appreciate a woman’s ﬁgure if clad in local dress. This
follows the ways a garment ﬁts and hangs, as well as how it ﬂows in movement. Following customary poise, women throughout Indonesia should be
slow and graceful (halus), and clothing accentuates their movements. Most
traditional wear inhibits long strides affecting a woman’s poise. Some have
interpreted this as constraining women’s mobility in a larger sense, notably in
Java where women’s tightly wrapped kain can be especially binding.14
Regarding this kain, one argues that, “restrictions on the behavior of women
symbolized by ‘traditional’ Javanese clothing were actually an innovation of
the 1950s and 1960s and are kept in place by oppressive government programs
and policies circulated throughout Indonesian society by modern media.”15
In fact, the national government deployed images of the ideal Indonesian
woman as primarily those of “motherhood” (keibuan)—the foundation of
home life and nationalism. It follows that inﬂated emphasis upon binding,
traditional female dress was part of these programs and policies.
Batik often epitomizes “Indonesian-ness,” carrying the status of the national
costume, yet also providing everyday wear as sarungs and kains. Batik is
mandatory formal wear in Java. The ﬁnest cloths of silk adorn men and women
in assorted styles and colors. Javanese men don distinct batik headpieces for
ceremonial wear, folded and shaped in complex ways to construct a classical,
pleated cap (called iket, meaning “bundled” or “bound,” relating to the word

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A market woman in Java takes a midday nap, wearing a commercial
batik kain, resting against her backpack of wares bundled in an old
kain. 1994. Courtesy of Jill Forshee.

ikat). The traditional iket descends from court cultures and indicates reﬁnement. Male headpieces express cultural and individual notions of status and
masculinity throughout the archipelago and range widely in style.
Better sarungs or kain are of silk or ﬁne cotton decorated with elegantly
precise handcrafted batik. This wax-resist dye method (described in Chapter
3) lends status to clothing through the time and skill involved in its patterns.
Internationally, batik represents the quintessentially Indonesian textile.
Elegant and inexhaustible, its motifs take natural forms like birds and ﬂowers,
but also contain abstract, symbolic designs from diverse courts and regions.
Altogether, approximately three thousand batik patterns are on record.16
Although originally and still predominantly a Javanese art, this cloth long
ago traveled to outer islands, where batik headpieces worn by men still denote
their standing. Women on various islands proudly don their best batik kains
and selendangs for special occasions. In many regions of Indonesia, wearing
their ﬁnest batik clothing is how people “dress up.”
With a sarung Indonesian women usually wear blouses called kebayas, of
silk, voile, or nylon. These form-ﬁtting, long-sleeved garments resemble sheer
jackets, delicately embroidered down the front panels and the wrists. As they
do not include buttons, women secure them with broaches (or often simply
safety pins) to keep them closed. These came to Indonesia via Malaysia,
following religious conversions of Indonesians to Islam or Christianity. Formerly, women of most islands went bare-breasted or wore simple cloths across
their chests, leaving their shoulders and arms free. Dutch further encouraged

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modesty in unconverted societies, and women complied by wearing cloth or
blouses. Kebayas also took long, shapeless forms and women have worn loose
tunics (baju).
Minangkabau women wear a spectacular head cloth called a tengkuluak
(“head cloth”) often folded around a crescent-shaped form. At formal events,
these textiles go on display as women form a parade and represent their
matrilineal descent groups. The long tengkuluak contain intricate patterns of
ﬁnely woven gold threads. Motifs evoke key Minangkabau tenets of spiritual
and behavioral righteousness, including ceremonial foods and esteemed animals. The wealthier the woman, the more intricate and multiple the designs
on her headpiece, along with its increased size. In bulk and elaboration, the
tengkuluak communicates the weight and complexity of women’s responsibilities in this persistently matrilineal society. These headpieces mirror the shape
of Minangkabau roofs, as they form upward-curving crescents suggesting
water buffalo horns. As do roofs, they also may imply spiritual notions of an
invisible realm, required to complete the arcs to form full circles. The women
also wear silken shoulder cloths, long-ﬁtted tunics, and sarungs containing
gold threads and mica or sarungs of ﬁne batik.
In the Lampung region of South Sumatra, gold threads, embroidery,
and mirror-like mica sequins adorn some of the most splendid and intricately patterned traditional clothing of Indonesia. Tapis (meaning “wrapped
cloth”) skirts worn by women display elegantly curving, labyrinthine designs.
Gold threads are laid upon sections in patterns and then hand sewn into
a woven cloth by a technique called “couching.” Further embroidery and
sequins of varying sizes render these pieces spectacular. Viewing a tapis is like
seeing countless possibilities in art and life portrayed in cloth. International
museums and collectors especially seek and prize tapis pieces.
The island of Timor produces textiles using a broad scope of techniques
and motifs, some solely speciﬁc to regions. Moreover, “one of the delights
of the textiles on Timor is that they are still very much a part of a living
tradition.”17 Across its length, Timor’s peoples might employ the most varied
scope of techniques of all the Indonesian islands, including ikat, embroidery,
couching, twining, supplementary warps and wefts, ﬂoating threads within
a weave, and so on. Motifs across this island differ tremendously. Cloth of
some regions bears no resemblance to that of not-so-distant parts of the same
island. The history of mountainous Timor Island is complex and particular
and vividly emerges through the range and intricacy of its woven clothing.
Indigenous dress has maintained in Timor to a far greater extent than other
traditional forms such as houses.
Ikat textiles represent an older type of fabric that for centuries has clothed
the royalty of some islands. Torajans of Sulawesi, Sumbanese, Bataks of

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The Raja of Boti, West Timor, wearing clothing
from cotton grown, spun, dyed, and woven by his
village. 1999. Courtesy of Jill Forshee.

northern Sumatra, Dayaks of Kalimantan and peoples of Flores, Lembata,
Timor, Savu, Solor, Adonara, Lamalera, Tanimbar, and other islands have
long produced distinctive patterns using the ikat technique. Entire books
have been written on the ikat cloth of just one island region, and this section
only can attempt a general description of this important fabric. Many ikats
contain symbols from animist iconographies such as plant forms, animals,
and amphibians or human ďŹ gures representing ancestors. People have borrowed motifs from many incoming sources and ikat pieces contain images
from Indian, Dutch, Chinese, or Portuguese encounters. These include
ancient Indian trade cloth patterns, Chinese dragons, heraldic lions from
colonial coins and seals, European ďŹ&#x201A;oral designs with vases, and winged
cherubs. The late queen Wilhelmina of the Dutch colonial era became a
standard, localized motif in East Sumba. Helicopters and the likenesses
of President Bill Clinton also appeared in eastern Sumba ikat in the early
1990s.

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Larger, blanket-like ikat pieces wrap the lower bodies of men, sometimes
with matching shoulder cloths. Ikat also decorates head cloths for men, worn
proudly in diverse manners. Women wear ikat as tubular skirts and shawls.
In Sumba, 100 ikats may enfold a dead body—the motifs of the outermost
fabric identifying the deceased to ancestors in the next world. People use
the best cloths possible for burials. The departed family member and ancestors directly affect well-being of the living so must receive due honors.
These tenacious beliefs, more than anything else, maintain local quality
control in textiles.
Ikats also are essential in bridal exchange. In the eastern islands of Indonesia
(sometimes called the exchange archipelago), typically a new wife’s family
gives textiles to that of her husband’s, who reciprocate with animals such as
water buffalo, horses, and gold pieces of jewelry. In fact, to be marriageable,
women of some islands must be appropriately skilled in the arts of creating
ikat and other fabrics. Daughters in this part of Indonesia, however, hold
immense value for their parents, due to the wealth they are able to bring in
through their bride price.18
Ikat cloths for men are generally called selimut in Indonesian (meaning
“blanket”) but hold speciﬁc names in every regional language. These wrap
lower bodies in multiple styles but usually extend no longer than knee length.
Men of Timor, Sumba, Flores, and elsewhere still commonly wear these
garments. Many ride horses between villages clad in ikat cloths. People wear
their best ikat fabrics for ceremonies. Indispensable head cloths mark men’s
rank or ritual function, proclaim their masculinity, and assert their personality.
In recent years, the head cloth might be the sole element of a young man’s
attire marking his historical identity. Ironically, jeans and a T-shirt further
accentuate a traditional cloth wrapped about the head. Head cloths consist
of pounded bark, batik, a bright solid color, the ﬁnest ikat, or other esteemed
types of fabric. Men in some areas fashion these in individualistic ways.
In Sumba, a wrapped head cloth characteristically features a starched,
upright, protruding end. This resembles a cockscomb (of a rooster) or
pompadour when worn at the front, though some wear them to one side.
Terms for “cock” bear the same double entendre in Indonesian as in English
(as well as in some local languages of the archipelago). Following this, a jauntily
stiff, upright portion of cloth suggests a phallus. Remarkably, Elvis Presley,
with his trademark hairstyle, has been a hero for decades in East Sumba. Such
was his popularity that for a number of years an annual “Elvis Impersonator”
contest took place on the east coast of the island. The Elvis frontal pompadour,
stiffened with pomade to remain erect and distinctly masculine, incited a
multi-cultural overlapping of style in Sumba—with the head cloth symbol-

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147

izing similar attributes. Thus, cultural ideals of masculinity become enhanced
through traditional dress, which paralleled more recent trends from afar.
For women of Sumba, ikat sarungs (lau) of ﬁner style include other
methods of complex weaving, embellished with shells and beads. Lau
hada (“lau with beads and shells”), display decorative images solely
through densely clustered beads and shells sewn onto black woven cloth.
Lau hada contain the oldest of Sumba’s motifs, from times before people
used the ikat technique. Women’s traditional cloths more often feature older
indigenous motifs than do men’s (which might include the old with the
new). This secures these ancient symbols and provides women with the role
of safeguarding patterns of the distant past. Adornments on ﬁne clothing
further advertise a woman’s social standing or “worth” in terms of a bride
price. Thus, clothing signiﬁes much for the family of a marriageable girl
and considerable effort goes into what a daughter wears at a ritual event.
This extends to gold jewelry.
Today, many Indonesians wear factory-made batik or plaid cloths throughout the islands. Ikat also issues from factories in Java and beyond but never
approximates the look of handmade textiles. Most Indonesians resist wearing
cheap renditions of their own traditional clothing—and always mark important life transitions with the best of customary cloth and dress. In the words
of one young women of Sumba, “[t]o not wear our ﬁnest tradition cloth at
funerals or weddings would be like saying that we don’t know where we come
from. Like saying that we don’t know whom our parents are. This would be
a great shame upon us, no matter how modern we may think that we are. No
matter if we have converted to being Christians.”19
NOTES
1. Lucien M. Hanks, Rice and Man: Agricultural Ecology in Southeast Asia (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1972), 20.
2. Janet Hoskins, “Doubling Deities, Descent, and Personhood: An Exploration of
Kodi Gender Categories,” in Power & Difference: Gender in Island Southeast Asia, ed. Jane
Monnig Atkinson and Shelly Errington (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 286.
3. See Janet Hoskins, The Play of Time: Kodi Perspectives on Calendars, History, and
Exchange (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 110, paraphrased here.
4. See Tom Therik, Wehali—The Female Land: Traditions of a Timorese Ritual Center
(Canberra: Pandanus Books, 2004), 190.
5. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an
Out-of-the-Way Place (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 94, paraphrased here.
6. Tsing, Diamond Queen, 189.
7. See Jill Forshee, Between the Folds: Stories of Cloth, Lives, and Travels from Sumba (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001), 148–151.
8. See Therik, Wehali, 38, 40.
9. “Let Us Now Praise Instant Noodles,” Latitudes 5 (June 2001): 58–60.

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10. Forshee, Between the Folds, 228 n. 28.
11. Adrian Vickers, “Modernity and Being Moderen: An Introduction,” in Being Modern
in Bali: Image and Change, ed. Adrian Vickers (New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia
Studies, 1996), 9.
12. Stuart Ewen, All-Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture (New
York: Basic Books, 1988), 33.
13. Jane Schneider and Annette B. Weiner, “Introduction,” in Cloth and Human
Experience, ed. Annette B. Weiner and Jane Schneider (Washington: Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1989), 6.
14. Widespread wear of these garments came about in the late nineteenth century, with
the invention of metal printing stamps to produce batik quickly. Thus, common women were
able to afford them.
15. See Laurie J. Sears, “Introduction: Fragile Identities—Deconstructing Women and
Indonesia,” in Fantasizing the Feminine in Indonesia, ed. Laurie J. Sears (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1996), 38. See also chapters by Sylvia Tiwon and Sita Aripurnami in the
same volume.
16. See Anne Richter, Arts and Crafts of Indonesia (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1994),
90–91.
17. Mark Ivan Jacobson, and Ruth Marie Yeager, Traditional Textiles of West Timor:
Regional Variations in Historical Perspective ( Jacksonville, Illinois: Batuan Baru Productions,
1995), ii.
18. A bride’s family also has the upper hand in requiring much more in “payment “ than
does the groom’s to secure a marriage. Moreover, the groom’s family will always be called upon
to help out the family of the bride (such as in repairing a house), whereas the opposite is not
true. Thus, “ bride-givers” enjoy continuously higher status than do “bride-takers.”
19. Told to Jill Forshee by a woman in Rindi, East Sumba in 2000.

6
Gender, Courtship, and Marriage
Gender, courtship, and marriages take varied forms across Indonesia—not
always following one another in predicable ways. The Indonesian language
contains no pronouns denoting gender, such as “he” or “she.” This trait
extends to other indigenous languages throughout the archipelago (and across
Southeast Asia). Following historical accounts of many centuries back, hairstyles and dress of men and women did not emphasize sexual distinctions.
Dressed in sarungs or wrapped cloth, people went bare to the waist, and wore
long hair.1 New religions, colonialism, and popularity of world fashion changed
this. However, early markers of masculinity and femininity were likely borne
out in ways too subtle for outside observers to recognize, thus much remains
unknown. Foreign chronicles of early Indonesian customs inevitably reﬂected
the biases and cultural unawareness of their authors. This chapter provides
glimpses of a recent range of moralities, courtships, sexualities, and unions
among Indonesian peoples.
GENDER ROLES AND SOCIALIZATION
Early visitors to Indonesia noted a relatively high level of autonomy of
women. One historian remarks:
It would be wrong to say that women were equal to men—indeed there were few
areas in which they competed directly. Women had different functions from men,
but these included transplanting and harvesting rice, weaving, and marketing. Their
reproductive role gave them magical and ritual powers which it was difﬁcult for men
to match. These values may explain why the value of daughters was never questioned
in Southeast Asia as it was in China, India, and the Middle East.2

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This still holds true to a great extent, as women maintain family social and
economic control. Yet handling money is not a prestigious activity in most of
Indonesia and considered beneath the concerns of men. Market women are
among the kasar (coarse) of society and Indonesians often refer to low levels
of speech as “market language” (bahasa pasar). While women may direct the
public scene through commerce, men control it through political prestige,
such as higher-level jobs or ruling positions.
Still, power maneuvers through sinuous routes and one must live among
Indonesians to understand social forces directing households and societies.
Women’s reproductive and magical powers play out in daily life through
birth, agriculture, textile production and dyeing, and cooking. Importantly,
women control the social information and tone affecting family and community relations.
Traditional Ideals of Masculinity and Femininity

Ideals of masculinity contrast across Indonesia. In Java, masculine models follow principles of reﬁnement and stoicism. Such traits characterize the
Javanese wayang kulit shadow play, where heroes are small, elegant puppets
in stark opposition to villainously large, vulgar giants. The halus (reﬁned)
champions of manhood win in the end through guile, connections, and magical powers. Thus, physical might does not make right in Javanese displays
of manhood. The status of a powerful man rests upon historical notions of
potency. This (often volatile) force provides grounds for political authority,
sexual capacity, material wealth, or social control—in a word, power—in the
world.3 To lose one’s temper or behave aggressively marks a man as low in
character and devoid of true potency. This explains why Indonesians become
shocked and confused by how quickly Westerners rise to displays of anger—a
long-standing basis of cultural misunderstandings.
Ironically, as pointed out, “Javanese have many of the same kinds of fears
and fantasies about ‘Kalimantan’ that North Americans have about the jungles and headhunters of “Borneo.”4 On islands besides Java, people might
prize open ﬁerceness as an attribute of masculinity—yet within controlled
contexts. This notably applies to former headhunting or war-like societies.
Simultaneously, men also adhere to local notions of propriety and etiquette
in presenting a favorable male image. Across the archipelago contests such
as cockﬁghts, boxing matches, battles on horseback with lances, and other
demonstrations of bravado draw audiences and assert male prowess. These
displays now include karaoke performances or showing off on motorbikes.
Other archetypal modes for the sexes manifest across Indonesia: for men,
berani (“bravery” or “boldness”) and kejantanan (“roosterish,” “virile,” or

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153

“brave”) and for women, lemah (“weak” but also “supple” and “graceful”). In
their bodily strength, men have symbolized power and its justiﬁcation through
heroics. This surfaces through Indonesia’s many modern monuments (echoing
a global visual cliché). While bravado characterizes battles or competitions,
men typically do not conduct themselves in “macho” like manners in normal
social circumstances. A rude man will repel women, who will label him as kasar
or worse—kurang ajar (literally “without learning,” meaning “ignorant,”—the
strongest Indonesian insult implying an animal state of being).
Following custom, women across the islands appear languid in movements
and facial expressions. People often remark that females tire easily and cannot
walk long distances. (This, despite the reality that common women walk with
heavy loads for miles to and from market or carrying water. In Bali, women
labor on grueling road crews, unloading and carrying heavy rocks for hours).
Yet through graceful, subtle gestures, women exhibit attractive feminine
demeanors. Both sexes frequently cover their mouths in laughter, as showing
teeth connotes animal-like behavior. Women’s hair should be clean, combed,
and worn in a ponytail or bun, depending upon age. Long, uncontrolled hair
signiﬁes wildness or insanity—the ultimate disorder.
Notions of Sexual Morality
The language of everyday moralism is shot through, on the male side of it, with
roosterish imagery. Sabung, the word for cock (and one which appears in inscriptions as
early as a.d. 922), is used metaphorically to mean “hero,” “warrior,” “champion,” “man
of parts,” “political candidate,” “bachelor,” “dandy,” “lady-killer,” or “tough guy.”5
Indeed, it appears that as sex is forbidden, it becomes an even more seductive
creature.6

Indonesians do not openly discuss sex. While terms for “rooster” or “cock”
(as in the quote above) signify male powers, a general term for both male
and female sexual organs is kemaluan, meaning “shame” or “embarrassment.”
This does not mean, however, that Indonesians engage in sex less frequently
or with less fervor than do people anywhere else. In some regions, they carry
on more sexual dalliances and extramarital affairs than do average Americans.
Further, moralistic prohibitions regarding homosexual relations typical of
Euro-America have never guided most customary Indonesian ideas.
Among animistic societies unconverted to world faiths, concepts such as
“original sin” or “asceticism” bear no meaning. Sex among such people does
not carry pious stigmas like those in many parts of the world. In fact, men
often prefer wives with sexual experience, though this might relate to fears of
hymeneal blood in deﬂoration. However, serious rules, taboos, and norms still
apply to sexual and marital relations. For example, everywhere incest taboos

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exist, although cross-cousin marriage long was encouraged to ramify lineages.
In recent times, this occurs less frequently. Other rules deﬁne conduct during
pregnancy, after birth, modes of marriage, and treatment between spouses.
Context determines sexual talk and behavior in Indonesia. Women bathing
together in a river often joke candidly about their sex lives or a group of male
friends may boast of conquests. Still, casual sexual references in mixed company are rare. Raucous sexual banter among same-sex friends also employs
euphemisms avoiding reference to genitals by direct, anatomical names.
Across Indonesia, male and female sexual organs possess a mystical
dualism—simultaneously sacred and profane. In some regions, this descends
from ancient Hindu concepts of linggam-yoni, that is, the coupling of phallus
and vagina as a central religious principle organizing the universe. In animist
societies, genitals are sites of potency through which ancestors direct their
forces along lineages. The name for Sumba’s animist faith (Marapu) also denotes genitals in some regions. This implies ancestral transmission and inheritance through sexual organs of the living. Thus, genitalia become essential
conduits for religion, humanity, and reproduction—centers of cosmological
and personal potency. Yet, when spoken of or displayed in a vulgar manner,
private parts of the body symbolize the socially shameful—reﬂecting lowly
character on the part of the offender. This dualism carries through much of
Indonesian culture, while reinforcing ideal social behavior.
Yet life everywhere ﬁnds outlets in deﬁance of the forbidden. Indonesians
at times speak with as much bawdiness as people anywhere and sex becomes a
covert matter of what one can get away with. Tensions between the ideal and
the real provide hidden sparks to sexual life.
COMING OF AGE AND COURTSHIP
Relationships Traditional and Modern

Indonesian courtship extends to ﬂirting or forming relationships not leading to marriage. Conventional modes and mores differ between islands, classes,
and religions. Nonetheless, male suitors almost always require approval of a
female’s family, while a male’s parents usually must accept his marital choice.
In Muslim societies in Java and beyond, young women’s sexual purity reﬂects
upon family honor; people expect virginity at the time of their marriages. In
outer island regions where Islam and Christianity are not entrenched historically, sex becomes less an issue of morality than one of social rank—where
women receive a return for their sexual favors acknowledging their “worth.”
Traditionally, conjugal matches took place through family go-betweens and
often followed ideals of cross-cousin marriage in many areas. Where arranged

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155

marriages still occur, nonetheless, parents commonly allow the prospective
couple to meet and decide whether or not they like one another. Unless a
family is very poor and seeking higher connections or greedy for bride price,
they will rarely force a girl into a marriage that she does not want. Men sometimes wed to suit their parents, then give their wives minimal attention and
continue to philander. Recent ideas of equality and compatibility between
men and women have affected many of the young, leading to new types of
relationships and marriages. Yet families frequently maintain great inﬂuence
in their children’s lives and choices.
In light of new times and popular cultural inﬂuences, many younger
Indonesians emulate foreign ideas of romance. Pop music croons longings of
young love and single people desire sentimental marriages. Yet, ﬂirting, ballads, and romantic poetry express nothing new. Indonesians have mastered
such forms of sexual communication for centuries, like the ﬂirtatious pantun
poetry discussed in Chapter 3. Major differences in customary Indonesian
marriages (compared to those in the West) include the primary involvement
of family in choosing or approving mates and the practicality rather than the
romanticism of matrimony.7
Still, many have deﬁed families in the face of love, while others have
committed suicide when forbidden to wed those they desire. Suicide is not
uncommon in caste-conscious Bali, when someone suffers a broken heart
(putus asa, also meaning “loss of hope”) after denied marriage for love. Suicidal
practice reﬂects the tragic side of ultimate parental control. Following this,
despondent youth commonly drink insecticide to end their lives.
Further, some families have forced young women into marriages they did not
want. One report from eastern Indonesia describes a young woman hog-tied
and carried to the home of a local schoolteacher against her will. The teacher
had paid her father many animals in bride price, but the girl loved another
young man. At her new “husband’s” house she was “broken” through rape, and
locals reported hearing her screams. The indigenous term for ﬁrst-time sex for a
girl means “mixing” of the couple involved. Now the term frequently borrows
from the Indonesian word rusak (“broken”), in breaking a girl’s hymen (and in
some cases her spirit). This contrasts drastically with former local notions where
premarital sex was accepted, as long as parents approved of the boy.8 Such relations changed following a Javacentric view of virginity and lack of choices for
women, cast across the islands by the New Order national regime.
Displaying Oneself—Male and Female Attractiveness

Besides following norms of beauty, Indonesians everywhere seek herbal
or supernatural ways of enhancing their sex appeal. Popular potions called

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jamu offer a wide range of herbal elixirs and remedies for illness. These are
sold in packets, served at pharmacies, or concocted individually. Men across
the islands drink jamu for virility, along with the more recently sold “energy
drinks” (often containing caffeine and nicotine) to increase their drive. In
parts of Java, women drink an herbal mixture to make them vaginally “dry”
and tight during sexual intercourse to please men (though often causing pain
for women). In some regions, women use jamu to shorten their menstrual
periods, as men tend to fear and loathe uterine blood. Indeed, body ﬂuids
carry negative supernatural associations, involved in the workings of “black
magic” (gaib hitam).
As both sexes display themselves through appropriate manners of grace,
they also adopt newer fashions to attract attention. Young women in many
places now wear skirts to the knees (or above), showing off their calves. As
women’s legs customarily remain hidden under ankle length clothing, the
sight of thighs, calves, or even ankles arouses Indonesian men. In most places
long, shiny hair adds to a girl’s beauty, though now many wear their hair
chin length and shorter, following fashion. Young men ideally dress in clothing deemed neatly fashionable (rapi). Most wear jeans or slacks. Rarely do
Indonesians of either sex wear shorts in public, except in tourist regions like
Bali. Even in grass huts without electricity, old-styled irons containing hot
coals ensure that residents emerge in neatly pressed clothing.
Cleanliness is fundamental to physical attractiveness and scented bath and
beauty products are immensely popular in Indonesia. Women love cosmetics and Indonesia produces several lines of quality lotions, shampoos, and
so forth. These days, both sexes value Western toiletry brands, much as
Americans prize such products from France. Sensitive to aroma, Indonesians
often complain that Westerners rarely bathe and emit an unpleasant body
odor. Across the islands, one’s scent signiﬁes personal essence. Offensive body
odors might incite suspicions of evil character. Cleanliness and sweet scents
denote humans, while the opposite evokes beasts.
Over the past decade, the media increasingly have emphasized the beauty
of white skin, through advertisements for lightening creams. This mostly
applies to women, as those light of complexion have long held esteem. A
preference for paler skin results from class biases of those not forced to work
outdoors. Most western Indonesians view darkness as unattractive and often
denigrate more swarthy peoples as “primitives”—such as those of West Papua
and the eastern islands.
Indonesians disdain anything animal-like in human physicality or behavior. Thus, as in Bali, many undergo ceremonial tooth ﬁling at puberty,
making their pointed canine teeth even with the others. Some animal metaphors, such as the rooster, importantly apply to ideal male dispositions, like

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bravery and virility. Still, the bravest of men will not impress the opposite sex
if unwashed and coarse in dress and manners.
For centuries men demonstrated courage by traveling to other lands, such
as the rantau previously discussed. By bringing back goods and new knowledge from afar, men thus gained prestige in their homelands. This practice
never ceased, but took on modern forms. Worldly sophistication has accelerated as an attractive male attribute—as expertise regarding foreign ideas and
contemporary world fashions especially impresses young women. Throughout Indonesia’s history, men have introduced new styles, ideas, foods, and
so forth to their home regions. Imaginably, a desire to impress women has
continuously motivated their far-ﬂung quests for the new. Thus, many stylistic and conceptual changes have come about through men’s displays of their
worldly wise qualities in attempts to attract women.
Courting and Dating

Young people in Indonesia usually socialize in groups and romantic interests develop at around age 16, although dating may happen later. A girlfriend
or boyfriend (both termed pacar) frequently belongs to an extended circle of
friends, including siblings. Within these circles, much banter and laughter
goes on between the sexes. Girls often tease boys, and some show their interest by slapping them in fun. Young couples rarely socialize alone, although a
boy may visit a girl on a front verandah or pavilion. Still, he will often bring
a male friend.
Generally, couples do not touch or sit close together and almost never
show affection when out in public. Recently, this has changed somewhat
and pacars might hold hands as they walk. Yet Indonesians never exhibit
public displays of affection common to Euro-Americans. Groups including
“couples” visit each other’s homes, play guitars and sing, go to movies, stop
at warungs, or walk around town.
In village areas, a boy will visit the village of a girl he likes, often initially
appearing nonchalant and observing her from a distance. Messages pass back
and forth between the couple through friends or siblings, and eventually a
suitor might be invited to make an appearance at the girl’s home. Much then
transpires through family channels on both sides. Eventually, a girl may be
allowed to go out for a walk with a boy or ride somewhere nearby on the back
of his motorbike. Botanical euphemisms abound for a girl’s coming of age,
such as becoming a “ripe banana.”
Dating also happens on the sly, as couples secretly meet to ﬂirt and talk.
Depending upon region, religion, and social class, such liaisons may progress
to sexual adventures. In rural areas, couples carry on affairs at night, hidden

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in high cornﬁelds or inlets of beaches. Young men at times sneak into a girl’s
room under cover of dark. This does not necessarily result in sexual intercourse but, rather, simply lying together for a few hours. In some places, parents permit engaged young couples to spend trial evenings together in a girl’s
bed. Nuptial negotiations usually are well under way for this to happen.
Betel nut (pinang) is a historical elixir of choice across Southeast Asia. In
terms of sexual symbolism, the sexes chewing betel together is loaded. In most
places, people do not partake of this practice until they reach sexually maturity. Sharing betel insinuates much for a man and woman. Flirting and innuendo accompany the preparation and chewing of this mild narcotic. In many
areas, the betel nut process involves placing a bit of the dried nut (of the areca
palm) in one’s mouth, then dipping a long, solid catkin from the piper plant
(sirih) into a bit of powdered lime (kapur) cupped in the left hand. People then
bite off this lime-coated section and chew as it breaks down the nut in their
mouths. The catalyzing moment begins when all ingredients mix. Thus, betel
is termed sirih-pinang—implying a complementary dualism of phallic catkin
and feminine nut. Things begin to happen when the mouth turns red and
ﬁlls with saliva. At this point, a chewer spits the red liquid (often with neat
precision) while continuing to munch and chat. After a few moments, a sense
of mild euphoria takes over. Sirih-pinang is an eminently social substance,
facilitating relaxation and conversation. Some chew betel with tobacco or use
a leaf from the piper plant to wrap the entire combination.
Customarily, men became excited at the sight of a woman’s red-stained
lips. The eventually black-stained teeth sirih-pinang caused were a sign of
beauty for centuries. In eastern Indonesia, if a man dips his stick of sirih
into a woman’s hand for lime powder, this constitutes a sexual proposition. Through consistently bringing a woman sirih-pinang, a man signiﬁes a
relationship. Courtships and affairs (including extramarital) often begin with
betel nut.
Virginity and Premarital Sex (When Sarungs Go Up)

Apart from strict Islamic societies, female sexuality outside of marriage
seldom carried the moral censure as in much of the world. Under the New
Order, however, women’s sexual conduct became a central government concern. Government organizations and policies arose to sublimate women into
one realm—as wife and mother. For men, sexual models were looser. Issuing
from Jakarta, Javanese Muslim values upon female virginity were disseminated through national discourse throughout Indonesia. Reﬂecting ascetic
notions, most Javanese customarily engage in sex fully clad, including married couples. While sarungs may go up for a sex act, people of Java can be

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exceptionally “straight-laced” about their bodies and usually perform in the
dark (at least following custom). Thus, traditional Javanese sexual models
issued from Jakarta likely did not take hold on other islands to a signiﬁcant
degree.
Regardless of policies, across Indonesia married and unmarried women
joke about sex and compare experiences. Butts of jokes become men, whose
penises and sexual aptitude undergo scrutiny. When women share secrets
of pleasures in sex acts, they often use metaphorical terms to discuss such
things—such as “coconuts” “bananas,” “cakes,” or “mangoes” and term
sexual phenomena as “peeling a fruit” or “ﬂowering.”
In societies of outer islands, sex between unmarried couples can be common. Some families permit young people to experience “trial marriages”
while living in a girl’s family household. Should pregnancies occur, children
resulting from such arrangements belong to the girl’s descent group. In many
societies, girls hold high value for parents through their eventual bride price.
In these areas, bride-givers carry more authority and higher status than bridetakers.
Same-sex experimentation long has been normal throughout Indonesia.
Young friends will simulate sex acts between men and women to “practice”
for the future event or to experience pleasure. Usually such relations represent
a passing phase in the lives of Indonesians, although some develop homosexual preferences. Public touching between members of the opposite sex rarely
occurs in Indonesia, but same-sex friends and relatives of all ages hold hands,
rest their arms upon a companion’s leg, or even sleep with arms across each
other. Such intimacy provides opportunities for sexual experience. Usually
not regarded as homosexual behavior, people instead view this as adolescent
play. In Java and Bali, many have noted this tendency among the young.
With the growing availability of pornographic images via media and the
Internet, Indonesian men have broadened their notions of sexual activities,
although many likely persist in fears regarding facial proximity to female genitals. In fact, kissing on the mouth is a relatively new phenomenon in Indonesia and yet unpracticed in many regions. The term for “kissing,” cium, means
to sniff (and thereby take in) another’s essence and forms a standard greeting
among family and close friends across the islands, as they “kiss” each other’s
cheeks. In some places, people rub noses among family to show affection.
Rubbing noses also becomes foreplay, as opposed to mouth kissing. Sexual
intercourse can be fast in Indonesia, and only recently has much general discussion developed regarding female orgasm. Yet one cannot know the practices among people of such a large, diverse country. It may be that in regions
people have attended well to the pleasures of sex for men and women for
centuries—practicing far more sophistication than outsiders can imagine.

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Views on Women’s Sexuality and Emotional Control

Often when a seduction takes place without family approval, people consider the man at fault—although in stricter Muslim communities, views toward women can be harsher and based in family honor. Nonetheless, usually
a girl will be chastised but not harshly punished, as most Indonesians consider women vulnerable (and even irrational) in the face of male advances.
An extension of the lemah feminine composite of grace, suppleness, and
weakness, people customarily regard women’s sexuality as passive and compliant. Therefore, in some regions a girl’s family will demand a payment for
her seduction. Often male kin will pressure a young man to comply, to the
extent of using physical violence.
The opposite archetype of female sexuality creates myths, beliefs, and
accusations of witchery. Ancient tales from Java tell of a seductive women
wandering at night, with a hole in the middle of her trunk. Similar myths
pervade the islands, in which such women will lure men to possession or
death. At night in some regions, men are more afraid at the sight of lone
women than women are of men. As women traveling alone are rare sights
across the archipelago, they appear abnormal or dangerous when they do
so—particularly in the dark.
Thus, opposing images of female sexuality shape ideas of the feminine.
One is compliant and gives life; the other is predatory and takes away life.
Men fear women’s sexual ﬂuids, and the dark, visceral mysteries of fertility and reproductive power. Thus, blood of the womb represents a perilous
substance to men—in its inexplicable difference and uncontrollable nature.
Many tales across the islands express such fears, telling of men going mad
from contact with uterine blood or losing their virility.
Indigo dye used for textiles often corresponds to women’s ﬂuids. In
most places, men will avoid an indigo dye pot like the plague. Fermented
and odiferous, people liken liquid indigo to uterine blood. Control over
this colorant is a realm where women wield uncontested power.9 Still, the
blue yarns of indigo weave through most of Indonesia’s customary fabrics,
clothing both sexes for centuries. The dye only carries danger in liquid
form.
It may be that ideals of passivity and weakness in women developed not
only in response to men’s fears of their elusive powers, but of their real behavior in the world. That women ever willingly yielded all power seems unlikely. Rather, they asserted themselves through possible circuits in daily life.
Imaginably, men felt impelled to cast them as the weaker sex, to curb their
activities and inﬂuence. World religions, colonialism, and nationalistic ideals
further established male dominance.

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Views on Male Sexuality and Emotional Control

In Java control over passions marks a customary ideal of manhood and a
reﬁned character, but men do “lose control” (hilang kontrol). Sometimes they
blame this on love magic by women but often they admit to their own desires. Javanese possess a two-sided ethic of masculinity. One demands ascetic
control of sex urges while the other champions virility and seduction. Men
generally emulate the latter qualities. The term jago (“rooster”) characterizes a man successful with woman. President Sukarno married several times
while renowned for numerous affairs. To many Indonesians this was laudable
conduct, conﬁrming that their leader was a jago in many realms. Indonesian
men often admire the philandering reputation of U.S. President John Kennedy. Further, most were bafﬂed as to why Americans made such an obsessive
moral issue of U.S. President Bill Clinton’s indiscretions in the oval ofﬁce.
To them, such censure contradicted the normal privileges of power and made
Americans appear naïve.
Indonesian women typically regard men as powerful in “vitality” (semangat)
when young, but as untrustworthy and less committed to family than themselves after marriage. They expect or suspect sexual inﬁdelity and respond to
this in various ways, from ignoring it to leaving a marriage. Men often assert
their daring through gambling and risk-taking. Sexual dalliances fall within
the seductive realm of risk, while gambling is a ubiquitous male preoccupation across Indonesia. Thus, men generally hold less reliability at handling
family ﬁnances than women, who therefore usually handle the money. Still,
men typically enjoy far less social control than women, regardless of female
economic competence.
Traditional Beliefs Surrounding Menstruation and Venereal
Disease
In effect, the dangerousness of female fertility for men and society is the other face of
its enormous importance.10

Most men in Indonesia fear menstrual blood and sexual relations cease
with women until days after bleeding stops, often followed by ritual cleansing. In some regions, women must leave their homes and live in special dwellings during menses. People consider menstruation as a form of pollution,
dangerous to men and their powerful possessions—such as weapons. In former headhunting societies of eastern Indonesia, some regarded menstruating
women as more dangerous than warring men. Yet, on islands such as Seram,
while superior in their powers of destruction in terms of positive value, men
accorded women inferior value.11 This echoes ideas throughout Indonesia,

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suggesting reasons and meanings behind taboos. In many parts of the world,
that which is ambiguous and uncontrollable becomes taboo. Taboos maintain differences and boundaries while reinforcing them. Fluids by nature are
uncontrollable if not contained. Menstrual ﬂuids represent a unique power
(reproduction), a female mystery, and a process beyond male command.
Consequently, these ﬂuids incite fears, prohibitions, and myths.
Historically, many eastern Indonesians believed that gonorrhea and
syphilis passed to men through women. When men experienced discharge
associated with certain sexually transmitted diseases, they believed that they
had absorbed the uterine blood of a woman through intercourse. The remedy was to ﬁnd a “clean” (i.e., virgin) woman and return the malady to
where it belonged. The sexual diseases did not exist as such in women as
they always contained these liquids, but only manifested in men through
their contact with feminine blood—causing their own bloody discharge.12
Such belief and practice spread sexual disease to an epidemic proportion in
some regions.
MARRIAGE ACROSS THE ISLANDS
Let him taste greener pastures as long as he doesn’t bring a goat home.13
The inﬂuence of blood cannot be denied. I attach a certain value to the descent of
everyone around me, and I have an idea that I will be blessed by the ancestors of those
persons whom I love and honor.14
Marriages

Following conventional thinking, to be unmarried in Indonesia is to remain a child, regardless of one’s age. Marriage is a pivotal rite of passage by
which people reach adulthood and become recognized community members.
To remain single constitutes a social aberration for most Indonesians, who
wonder how lone people in the world ﬁnd any human joy or meaning to life.
Moreover, to exist without children is a tragedy. Indonesians regard childless
Westerners with sadness, remarking “Kasihan” (“What a pity”).
Notions of customary marriage across Indonesia contrast with romantic
unions people seek in the West. Often arranged by family or requiring their
approval, ideal marriages cement partnerships in which women handle ﬁnances and raise children while men hold the (at least public) role of power.
Passionate or affectionate marriages, nevertheless, certainly exist. International
media also have inﬂuenced current notions regarding love and marriage, especially through ﬁlms. Yet romance and sexual desire seldom represent primary nuptial necessities to many. In fact, Javanese societies regard passion as
disruptive—a ﬂeeting, volatile force inevitably causing marital disharmony.

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While polite conduct smoothes attraction between the sexes and enables
parental approval, social levels hold utmost importance to families. The terms
tinggi (“high”) and rendah (“low”) become essential in marriage negotiations
among class-conscious Indonesian kin. In many places, a man may marry a
woman of lower rank, but the reverse rarely occurs. In areas where a bride price
forms the crux of a nuptial agreement, some high-ranking women remain
single their entire lives. As their marriages require so many water buffalo,
horses, gold items, and so on, few men of any standing can ever afford such
costs. Further, as men currently move to other islands for education and
work, they often marry women away from their homelands. Off-island marriages might demand far less expense for the groom and his family but also
reﬂect changing ideas of choice in love and marriage.
Particularly in Java, people have valued asceticism for many centuries
(beginning with Hindu–Buddhism). This informs ideas about marriage.
Javanese tend to regard sex and sleep as necessary to a point but profane
indulgences if not practiced with control. Passions, however, emerge in other
ways and Indonesian men (and women) enjoy discreet sexual dalliances. Some
men even take more than one wife. Islamic law allows a man to have four
wives, but he must be able to support them all equally (which is a difﬁcult
undertaking). In current times, this has become far less common, following
women’s resistance and economic impracticalities. In some animist societies,
men persist in taking multiple wives.
Ceremonies vary throughout the islands, from exorbitant ritual pageants
to elopement. In Bali, eloping (called nganten) is the most common form
of marriage and parents are aware of it beforehand. Ceremonial weddings
of Bali are characteristically lavish and expensive. They include a priest and
may be held in a temple. Parents are frequently relieved at avoiding such
costs through the elopement of their children. Javanese marry by meeting at
a bride’s home and participating in an elaborate slametan (ceremonial meal)
involving all families. Then the couple must go to a district religious ofﬁcer
to undergo an ofﬁcial Muslim marriage. In some regions of Indonesia, a marriage ceremony is a simple event conducted by a shaman, priest, or senior
family member at a bride’s home. The groom’s kin group then often takes her
away (sometimes by truck carrying many people in the back). People in some
villages feign anger at the loss of the bride and ritually throw dirty water,
dung, and other refuse at the departing family. Western-style weddings with
white bridal gowns and veils are now popular and prestigious among Christians. The weddings are held in churches and then celebrated with receptions
and food at halls or family homes.
Marriage essentially carries on lineages and ensures the soundness of family descendants. Caste or class concerns create major qualms in matrimonial

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agreements as the “quality of blood” takes precedence over other considerations. People in some areas speak of clean or white blood as a biological
reality and an inherent attribute of high rank. For elites, maintaining their
bloodlines becomes a paramount concern. Thus, blood trumps all other
values in marital arrangements.
Men’s Family Roles

Men across Indonesia maintain the position of head of household and the
main providers for wives and children. Even in matrilineal societies such as
the Minangkabau of Sumatra, public power and decisions frequently fall to
husbands—if only on the face of things. In many areas, wives address their
mates with a degree of formality, calling them Bapak, or the shortened Pak in
deference to their standing as fathers and married men. Yet men will also address their wives as Ibu or Bu, denoting their status. Not infrequently, fathers
maintain some distance from their children, who approach and address them
formally. Often a mother’s brother assumes the role of disciplinarian and
protector of her children, becoming a major negotiator in their marriages.
In public, wives and families must show respect to men. In private, all sorts
of conduct might occur. A man may dominate the front stage of a household,
receiving guests and appearing in command. Yet his wife may hold ultimate
authority behind the public eye. Where women are particularly clever in handling and earning money, their power in the family tends to increase. Personalities and relations among Indonesian men and women vary as much as
anywhere else. In reality, some wives are domineering and ambitious while
some husbands are passive and lacking enterprise.
Men, however, generally enjoy more freedom of mobility and when not
working might ride off on motorbikes to visit friends or gamble. As married
adults, they often still socialize with old male friends. Women principally
devote their attentions to family, though many visit each other to mingle and
share conﬁdences. In many villages, men appear to do little actual work and
spend much of their time as they please. By contrast, women care for children, cook, clean, husk rice, pound coffee, garden, go to market, and often
weave and dye cloth.
Women’s Family Roles

As noted of the Sumatran Batak culture (by Susan Rodgers in Power &
Difference), “Women are the pivot around which kin relationships and politics turn.”15 Aside from state policies of ibuism, Indonesian women usually
take motherhood and the home most seriously. While often supported by

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165

husband’s salaries, they nonetheless manage the money, budget, and shop for
most everything needed for the home. Children typically feel close emotional
attachments to their mothers, extending into adulthood. In many areas,
Indonesians do not spank their children and attitudes toward the very young
are indulgent and loving.
Most inﬂuentially, women control social discourse through talk—sharing secrets among themselves, ridiculing others, berating or praising their
husbands, censuring neighbors’ conduct, and teaching their young. While
men maintain a public image, women produce social reality within and
between households. This becomes political on the ground level and,
indeed, women engineer most family and community relationships and the
directions they take. Female communication circuits often form the hidden
yet predominant power in communities.
As fertility in most things crucially concerns Indonesians, so with women.
Most desire children and many resist birth control to have several. In outer
island regions the death of children remains frequent and women fear the
limitations of birth control in the event of the loss of a child. Among the
islands of Indonesia where set marriage exchange between regions takes place,
a woman’s reproductive powers come at a price. Thus, bride price will pay
her family for losing her in movement to her husband’s village and providing
children to his kin group.
While many arranged marriages work out as well as any other types of
unions, frequently women ﬁnd themselves in unsuitable or even physically
abusive relationships. If these become unbearable, some women take to “running back” (lari kembali) to their parents’ homes. If the abuse has been severe,
a wife’s father, uncle, or brother might exact a ﬁne or physical punishment
upon the husband, and the women will never return to the marriage. Moreover, bride price will not be returned to the man’s family.
Government-Fostered Ideals Regarding Marriage and Male and
Female Propriety

Initial principles for the Indonesian Constitution came about in 1945,
emphasizing society as a whole made up of groups and individuals. Neither
communistic nor democratic, this model grew out of Javanese ideals of power,
which were basically feudalistic. The Constitution did not include human
rights provisions, although President Sukarno’s Vice-President, Muhammed
Hatta, had originally proposed them.16 This constitutional vacuum concerning rights of the people resulted in the arbitrary use of political authority.
Under President Suharto’s New Order regime (1966–1998), all wives of
civil servants became obligatory members of the state-sponsored Dharma

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Wanita (Women’s Association). This organization pressured women to
behave as submissive wives in service to their husbands and the national
government—based in exaggerated “traditional” feminine models of Java.
Stemming from Indonesian military thought, Dharma Wanita espoused
conformity and obedience, while regimenting the conduct and image of
women.17 Thus, an archetype of “housewife,” in conservatively binding traditional Javanese dress, became a nationalistic icon.
Simultaneously, following ancient notions of potency in Javanese culture,
the possession of women persisted as a natural attribute of male power, and
among bureaucrats and technocrats, sexual access likewise symbolized success.18 Eventually, women of Dharma Wanita mounted organized protests
concerning their husband’s sexual indiscretions, freedom to divorce them,
physical abusiveness, and lack of sufﬁcient ﬁnancial support. Even Suharto’s
wife (perhaps fearing the possibility of a second presidential spouse) supported a law protecting women, enacted in 1983 on Kartini Day.19
However, the New Order continued to regiment marriage and family life
through its encompassing economic power over civil servants. Many wives remained trapped in marriages for the sake of children, ﬁnancial support, or social
appearances, especially those at upper levels with the most to lose. Reﬂecting
employee attitudes toward male bosses in Indonesia, an adage developed—Selama Bapak senang—meaning “As long as the boss is happy.” This further fostered corruption and extramarital inﬁdelity as perquisites for men in power.
During the 1999 Indonesian Presidential campaigns, a contingent of the
national political party long in control—Golkar—held a convention at a
hotel in the city of Kupang, West Timor. Scores of men appeared in party
colors of yellow and black in hotel restaurants. One evening, a Golkar jaunt
to a nightclub was planned. As men congregated in the hotel foyer, an equal
number of prostitutes suddenly exited a nearby room then paraded in line to
join them. Each woman wore a black mini-skirt, a tight yellow blouse, and
black stiletto heeled shoes, broadcasting Golkar colors. The beaming Bapaks
fell into pairs with the woman and the excited, two-toned crowd rode off in
busloads.20 At the time, this episode could have epitomized political power
and sexual license in Indonesia.
Getting to Gender Equilibrium

Dharma Wanita and nationalist policies provided solidly deﬁned forces for
women to contest.21 Many sought ways around nationally imposed “norms”
and even as wives and mothers became active and vocal about their marriages,
families, subservience, and opportunities. As Indonesian women overwhelmingly control the social quality of everyday home life, their husbands felt

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less certain in their roles as masters of their abodes as their wives grew more
assertive. Indonesian men dread the laughter and ridicule of women, whether
from wives, mothers, sisters, co-workers, or friends. While a man may strut
and swagger about the ofﬁce, he will less freely behave so at home, fearing
female derision and loss of face.
Increasingly, as alternatives to the conﬁnes of married life and its compliant image of ibuism, Indonesian women sought educations—becoming doctors, lawyers, artists, journalists, intellectuals, and teachers. Many
enjoyed newfound opportunities and freedoms to the degree that a new
syndrome arose whereby elite and educated women decided to remain
single. While initially revolutionary in Indonesia, today female singularity
is no longer the bizarre rarity of times past. Still, these women often are
termed nyentric, (“eccentric”), notwithstanding their achievements. Obviously, opportunities for women exist in large urban regions that remain
nonexistent in remote villages. As noted by Daniel Lev in Fantasizing the
Feminine in Indonesia, “[t]he primary assets of the women’s movement
(again, as elsewhere) now belong largely to educated women from well-off
families in urban Indonesia.”22
Nonetheless, numerous women of the outer islands have become less repressively tradisi (“traditional”) and more public and business-oriented in
recent years (especially on the heels of tourism and trade). Now women
from Timor, Flores, Sumba, Sumatra, and other islands routinely travel to
Jakarta or Bali to sell textiles and other arts in tourist and urban centers.
Thus, a sort of female rantau—traveling to other lands—emerged in the late
twentieth century and continues on. Moreover, as noted of customary societies, women ﬁnd ways to sidestep or subvert male dominance in signiﬁcant
realms. Through the spread of tales, derision of men, and control of family
and neighborhood domestic life, women manage to exercise extensive power,
even if hidden or uncelebrated.
The New Order government, in an effort to curb overpopulation in Java,
instituted a program of Family Planning (Keluarga Berencana) encouraging
couples to bear only two children. Contraception, however, was predominantly applied to women. Inter-uterine devices (IUDs), banned in Europe
and North America (due to their tendency to foster infections), were placed
in Indonesian women. In a tropical environment where many women bathed
in rivers or took on infections from men, the IUDs caused tremendous problems. Numerous women developed severe or fatal disease, and many women
became sterile. This created a backlash of fear regarding birth control, particularly in village regions. While relatively effective in Java (and to a degree
in Bali), people suspiciously avoided the family planning program elsewhere.
Since then, however, safer means of contraception are available in Indonesia,

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but the miseries caused by IUDs greatly reinforced people’s ideas about the
dangers of curbing fertility.
On March 9, 2006, The Jakarta Post published a story on the Internet entitled “Women Take to the Streets to Condemn Sharia, Porn Bill.”23 Marking
International Women’s Day, the protestors drew attention to female persecution in regions like Banda Aceh under sharia (conservative Muslim) law.
Religious vigilantes had bullied many women for not wearing headscarves or
for walking outside at night unaccompanied by a man. Women could also
suffer ﬁnes for exposing their hair, shoulders, or legs, under a “pornography”
bill before the House of Representatives—which would not curtail the sexual
freedom of men. Protestors called on the government to focus on pressing
issues of human trafﬁcking and domestic violence and to remove the onus
of immorality from women. As Islamic Fundamentalism has grown in Indonesia, so have restrictions upon females. Women marching through Jakarta
proclaimed that the pornography bill was a move back to the old days when
they had little autonomy.
SEX AND THE SUPERNATURAL
Sorcery is a mystical act to be mystically combated.24
Metaphysical Beliefs Regarding Sex and Reproduction

Ancestors “operate” through sexuality in many regions, following marriage
alliances or proscriptions. Where lineages remain critical, misfortunes might
befall one who chooses to marry outside of prescribed alliances or exchange
circles. Calamities have a way of happening to reinforce metaphysical beliefs,
and Indonesians speak of many befalling those who deﬁed marital rules. A
man may wed on another island, then fall ill or remain childless. People will
then attribute misfortunes or illness within his parental family to his deﬁance of rightful patterns of marriage. Assertions will follow that the wrath of
violated ancestors inﬂicted misery upon their descendants.
Sexual dangers threaten people everywhere. Gaib hitam (black magic)
might strike a person via betel nut, food, water, or poison hidden beneath a
long thumbnail. Curses afﬂict people through body excretions, women’s ﬂuids, and the sexually symbolic liquid indigo dye. Small amounts of such matter can be placed in anything one ingests to harm a victim. Gaib hijau (green
magic) lends a practitioner irresistibility to anyone desired. Men and women
practice this, but gaib perempuan (woman magic) is a widely feared form of
male sorcery in which women fall under a man’s spell. People speak of unsavory men, who inexplicably attract women or achieve multiple marriages, as
using this practice.

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Myths throughout Indonesia center upon women who have died in childbirth or grief. Their ghosts take multiple forms and manifest at night. Some kill
or castrate men, some seduce them and absorb their powers, and all represent the
perilous side of the feminine. Balinese celebrate the dark Hindu goddess Durga
yet dread local female spirits. Tales of menacing ghosts often place them near
rivers. The ghost of a woman who died without children, but still seeks them
through drowning the living, might pull some one crossing a river underwater.
Female spirits simultaneously take on positive and negative aspects. In
eastern Indonesia, people speak of “sea wives.” On the Maluku island of Aru,
divers forge relationships with underwater female spirits, who in turn assist
them in ﬁnding pearls. Divers repay the spirits with white plates. If a man
does exceedingly well, he must return an offering in kind to his sea wife;
otherwise, she will haunt his household and possibly cause death among his
children. Thus, children of Aru often wear protective cords with talismans to
repel their fathers’ undersea wives.25
In eastern Sumba in the 1960s, an aging village king and his wife remained
childless. Rumor had it that their arranged marriage was never consummated.
According to villagers, the raja (“king”) preferred consorting with women who
lived beneath the sea. Periodically, he traveled with his entourage to a coastal
area at some distance for aquatic trysts. Villagers report that he could stay underwater for days. Upon death, this king left no successor, and for some time his
village fell into disarray. People suspected that he had left debts unpaid to his sea
wives and that they haunted his household and disrupted the village order.26
Stories of seas wives and underwater liaisons may provide men with further
“sexual” empowerment, if only mystical. In the case of the king above, his underwater trysts fulﬁlled a cultural expectation of manhood while enhancing
his mystical powers, even if no children resulted. Regarding divers of Aru, a
risk occurs in sea wife alliances, where consequences might outweigh beneﬁts
if not closely watched. Described as a compelling form of “deep play” for
men elsewhere,27 risk intensiﬁes games of chance, dangerous encounters, and
sex. Following this, one might lose all or gain immensely in the end, increasing the stakes and pleasures.
HISTORICAL AND PRESENT PLACES OF
HOMOSEXUALITY IN INDONESIA
Bancis are part and parcel of Indonesian society. Although mostly concentrated in
urban centers, they are also found in rural areas.28

Indonesian societies tend to accept alternative expressions of gender—
the most long-established termed banci. Androgynous in dress, these men

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behave as women, and through history they held special places in the social
order of things, such as matchmakers, artisans, performers, healers, or ritual
specialists. More recently, lesbians are increasingly visible and vocal across
Indonesia. People refer to them as tom boi or lesbi, borrowing from English
language terms. Indonesians customarily have exercised far more tolerance of
sexual diversity when compared with much of the world, and (barring recent
resurgences in religious fundamentalism) this continues today.
Male homosexuals have always been visible in Indonesia. Now lesbians
(lesbi) have entered public awareness. Many formerly remained unmarried or
took on something of a “tomboy” appearance. In villages, people will tease an
unmarried girl with a short haircut with remarks such as, “Her breasts are really just apples.” Stories throughout the outer islands describe “marriages” between women, where one takes on the appearance of a man. These carry little
indication of censure or immorality but form novel tales of eccentricity.
To many Indonesians, the banci represents a third gender. It seems that anywhere one travels throughout Indonesia, a banci appears as part of local society.
In the Soe region of West Timor, a famed weaver referred to by locals as tante
(“aunt”) was actually a man dressed in traditional women’s village garb, producing ﬁne cloth on a loom. He lived alone in a home among other villagers and appeared incorporated into local life. In fact, he instructed village girls in weaving.29
People may giggle at or tease bancis, but they generally enjoy acceptance within
communities; in some communities, bancis are said to possess special skills or
powers. One scholar from Indonesia noted: “As much as banci are denigrated,
they are also tolerated.”30 This has been the case as long as anyone remembers.
Bancis might be popular entertainers. This has been so for centuries and
appears in many contexts currently. A certain young man managed a warung
in East Sumba in the early 1990s, regaling customers by lip-synching tunes to
Diana Ross tapes. In the town’s annual talent show in 1993, this banci took
ﬁrst prize in his category by crooning “Baby Love.” Wrapped in a self-styled
tight female gown of pseudo-gold-lamé, he performed in a woman’s bouffant
wig. The crowd cheered him wildly.31
In 1982, Indonesia’s ﬁrst gay and lesbian organization was founded, in
part by scholar and activist Dédé Oetomo. He also helped publish Gaya
Nusantara in 1987—the longest-running gay and lesbian magazine in Indonesia. Homosexuality in Indonesia initially gained global interest through
the number of gay Europeans living in Bali in the early twentieth century.
Many were artists, writers, or musicians. The relatively free atmosphere of
Balinese culture attracted numerous gay men seeking a community devoid
of repressive European mores. Consequently, the art movement that blossomed in the 1930s largely grew out of these Europeans’ inﬂuences within
a tolerant Balinese social environment.

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Today, the gay scene manifests in urban Indonesia in similar ways to many
Western cities. In Jakarta, gay nightclubs have become popular and the sight
of transgendered people in public is not uncommon. Away from metropolitan or tourist centers, sexual diversity carries on as before, as people ﬁnd ways
to live as they are in communities that accommodate them.
NOTES
1. See Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450–1680, Vol. One: The
Lands below the Winds (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 146–172.
2. Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 146.
3. Ward Keeler, Javanese Shadow Plays, Javanese Selves (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1987), 39, paraphrased here.
4. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, “Alien Romance,” in Fantasizing the Feminine in Indonesia,
ed. Laurie J. Sears (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 299.
5. Clifford Geertz, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockﬁght,” in The Interpretation of
Cultures, by the same author (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 418.
6. Cok Sawitri, “Is Sex a Secret in Bali?” Latitudes 5 (June, 2001): 42–45.
7. In fact, the same values applied to most of the European world until the nineteenth
century. Romance and desire as the grounds for marriage is relatively recent in Western
thought as well.
8. See Janet Hoskins, Biographical Objects: How Things Tell the Stories of People’s Lives
(New York: Routledge, 1998), 121–136.
9. See Janet Hoskins, “Why Do Ladies Sing the Blues? Indigo Dyeing, Cloth Production,
and Gender Symbolism in Kodi.” in Cloth and Human Experience, ed. Annette B. Weiner and
Jane Schneider (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989), 141–173.
10. Valerio Valeri, “Both Nature and Culture: Reﬂections on Menstrual and Parturitional
Taboos in Huaulu (Seram),” in Power & Difference: Gender in Island Southeast Asia, ed. Jane
Monnig Atkinson and Shelly Errington (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 270.
11. Valeri, Both Nature and Culture, 242–243.
12. David Mitchell, personal communication, 1993.
13. Julia Suryakusuma, “The State and Sexuality in New Order Indonesia,” in Fantasizing
the Feminine in Indonesia, ed. Laurie J. Sears (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 115.
This is an expression among Indonesian military wives. The author goes on to write that the
“goat” is a second wife.
14. Raden Adjeng Kartini, Letters of a Javanese Princess, trans. by Agnes Louise Symmers
(Lanhem: University Press of America, 1985), 146.
15. Susan Rodgers, “The Symbolic Representation of Women in a Changing Batak Culture,” in Power & Difference: Gender in Island Southeast Asia, ed. Jane Monnig Atkinson and
Shelly Errington (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 312.
16. See Suryakusuma, “The State and Sexuality,” 92–93. I am indebted to this article for
much of the historical information regarding the Dharma Wanita organization in Indonesian
political contexts and its effects upon marriage, family life, and women’s freedom.
17. See Suryakusuma, “The State and Sexuality,” 99–100, paraphrased here.
18. Suryakusama, “The State and Sexuality,” 103, paraphrased.
19. Raden Kartini, the author discussed in Chapter 3, served as a model for Javanese
woman.

7
Festivals and Leisure Activities
Indonesians tend to savor festivals and leisure activities above all other
pastimes. Festivals often carry religious signiﬁcance. They also mark times
of year and punctuate life. Whether grand pageants or humbler family
celebrations, people put their best efforts into decorations and gaiety.
Leisure pursuits include festivals but also extend to competitions and games,
informal socializing, cockﬁghts, going to markets, riding motorbikes, creating
functional crafts like baskets, and gambling. As sociality is fundamental to
being Indonesian, enjoying activities with others characterizes life. People
revel in a “more the merrier” spirit at galas amid large crowds. Radio,
television, ﬁlms, home videos and DVDs have inﬁltrated people’s spare time;
yet sociability persists as groups of Indonesians enjoy these together. The
frequency of festive events and socializing prevent most Indonesians from
ever becoming “coach potatoes.”
LEISURE ACTIVITIES
Socializing

Chatting, or omong, happens anywhere people meet—on porches, buses,
streets, or at markets. Riding public transport, strangers discuss prices of food
or news. People rarely remain silent while traveling if someone sits nearby.
Indonesians invariably prefer venturing out with a kawan (“companion”).
Sharing experiences with another is more enak (“pleasant”).
Inquisitiveness and initiating conversation extend to most anyone who
appears normal. As a stranger passes a home, residents freely call out,

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“Mau ke mana? ” (“Where are you going?”)—an altogether reasonable
question eliciting answers like, “I’m going home,” or “I’m out for a walk.”
Unacquainted Indonesians passing on streets will acknowledge each other
out of mutual respect. Greeting others is both leisure activity and norm of
polite social behavior and can lead to conversation. Further, sharing betel
nut (or for many men, smoking) enhances leisure time and accompanies
the omong (chatting) of Indonesians. As consummate “porch-sitters,” many
islanders relax on mats and chewing betel suits this social mode.
Going to market is the most common day-to-day activity for many.
Here people converge in the most ubiquitous public institution of Indonesian social life. Public markets spotlight local realities through a dynamic
range of social vignettes. People discuss recent scandals, news spreads of
special events, women brag or commiserate on children or marriages, welldressed singles ﬂirt, and young men sometimes ﬁght. Indonesian markets
are carnival-like stages for leisure and life as people buy necessities. Bargaining (tawar menawar, or “bidding back and forth”) is an animated market
“sport,” often relentlessly pursued. While most Indonesians use money at
markets, some still barter in rural areas.
Sports (Olahraga)

Pencak silat (system of self-defense) or silat is an ancient martial art form
likely originating in western Sumatra in the seventh century. Historically
boys had to master silat before permitted to venture to other lands on the
rantau. Public schools in the Minangkabau region of Sumatra teach the sport
to students. In its movements, silat appears as both dance and athleticism,
employing a wide range of speciﬁc motions and attack techniques. Variations of silat have developed and people across Indonesia, Southeast Asia,
and around the world now practice it. Proponents of pencak silat are trying to
achieve the status of an Olympic sport.
The Manggarai people of western Flores hold ceremonial whip ﬁghts called
caci. Players wield three-meter long whips of sharp rattan or bound cane
and wear protective headgear with water buffalo motifs. Wearing Manggarai
sarungs and decorative belled anklets, men carry protective shields of rawhide,
yet their upper bodies remain naked. This is one of Indonesia’s most “macho”
battles. Contestants taunt and insult each other into action and whips inﬂict
deep, bloody cuts, leaving scars largely on arms and shoulders. Attackers,
however, ﬁercely aim whips at faces, necks, or hands of opponents. Some say
that scars (if not indicating many losses) attract local women. Gongs, drums,
and singing enliven the matches.

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Cockﬁghting evolved with other tournaments of ﬁghting tigers, elephants,
and buffaloes held by royal courts. Spilling of blood entertained the masses and
likely fulﬁlled ritual sacriﬁces essential for fertility, puriﬁcation, and conquests
of war.1 Cockﬁghts have been part of Indonesian life as long as anyone knows.
Today millions of men keep ﬁghting cocks under large, airy baskets, feeding,
grooming, and exercising them as beloved pets. As remarked of centuries past,
“Of all such opportunities for gambling, cockﬁghting was by far the most
popular for reasons which probably have to do with the close identiﬁcation
of the rooster with the male ego.”2 All religions (except animism) and the
national government ban the sport, yet its popularity never wanes.
Formats vary, but ﬁghts are always frenzies of violence. Balinese attach
razor sharp spurs to their roosters’ legs, and the winning bird often slices
the other open. Bouts are short and explosive, as cocks ﬂy at each other with
heads thrust forward and wings beating wildly. Cockﬁghts are spectacles of
pure fury and betting is fast and frantic. Contests embody men’s struggles
for masculinity, status, attacking enemies, and aiming for grand achievement
while risking utter loss. An entwinement of male passions and risk-taking has
perpetuated cockﬁghting in Indonesia.
World-famed for its annual Pasola pageant, West Sumba attracts thousands
to watch hundreds of horsemen “jousting” and ﬂinging (now blunted) spears.
Festooned in colorful headgear, pom-poms, cloth, and bells, men and horses
enact a battle evoking medieval European pageantry. Skill on horseback
astounds audiences as men shift swiftly, riding sideways to avoid a spear, and
then spring upright while battling at full speed. Formerly Pasola necessitated
deaths, as spilled blood fulﬁlled the ritual. With spears now blunted (by law),
riders aim at vulnerable areas, sending ﬁerce blows to the temple. Most years
at least one man dies. Pasola celebrates sea worms arriving at coasts annually.
An abundance of worms bodes bountiful rice harvests. In recent times, many
foreigners have attended this festival, including Dutch royalty—heightening
the prestige of the event.
Horseracing has spread to most of Indonesia. Sumbanese breed horses for
export and racing is a passionate sport on the island. The neighboring island
of Sumbawa produces small pony-like horses for racing. A major annual
event called Maen Jaran (horseracing) celebrates the end of harvest. Young
boys ride as jockeys in madly competitive races. Now horseracing marks all
major festivals in Sumbawa, including national holidays. Horses wear colorful
bridles and pom-poms and owners of winners enjoy acclaim. The races incite
heavy gambling, in which people pool their money to bet greater sums.
Bull racing, called Kerapan Sapi, occurs from July to October as a
unique pageant of the island of Madura. Begun long ago with competitions

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between plowing teams, these have evolved into a major sport and, as horse
racing, a prime wagering event. The ultimate 130-meter race includes 100
bulls adorned with gold. All must be Madurese stock and conform to
speciﬁc physical traits. Before races begin, a procession of bulls bedecked
in colorful ribbons, ﬂowers, yokes, and jeweled headpieces marches in a
festive parade through town streets. Brightly decorated parasols shade the
bulls and drums and ﬂutes accompany the promenade. When races start,
gamelan orchestras and gongs begin to play, exciting bulls and adding
festive atmosphere.
Most Indonesians cannot swim and fear the water. Yet, a surﬁng craze
has engrossed Bali youth for decades—through contact with surﬁng tourists
on their southern coast. Now Balinese have gone on to world championships. Boats have raced through the Maluku waters for centuries. Seafaring
peoples such as Bugis and Makasar still join races in displays of superior
boatbuilding and navigational skill. Traditional ﬁshermen of Sulawesi now
sail in an annual race between roughly 100 outriggers traveling more than
300 nautical miles. Boat races in long, narrow craft occur yearly on the
Musi River in South Sumatra and traditional boats race upon the rivers
of Kalimantan. Indonesians competed in the Traditional Boat Race at the
2005 Southeast Asian Games, with a man and a woman each winning a
silver medal.
Western sports like volleyball, soccer, tennis, and badminton are common
in Indonesia today, played vigorously and drawing crowds. Volleyball games
appear almost anywhere. Soccer players draw immense enthusiasm, publicity, and fans. In Sumatra, Java, and Sulawesi, an older contest similar to
badminton entailed wooden bats hitting back and forth small bamboo tubes
with extending feathers. The imported game of badminton thus really took
on through the islands. Many fashion their own shuttlecocks or “birdies”
and nets. Indonesian Rudy Hartono won the “All England Informal World
Championship” in badminton for seven consecutive years.
The ancient game Sepak takraw or sepak raga (“kick basket”) evolved
into a modern sport played at the annual Southeast Asia Games. Now
internationally known by the Thai term takraw, this historically noncompetitive game compares to “hackey sack” popular in the West. The Dutch
found men playing takraw on the Banda Islands in the early seventeenth
century.3 As casually played in Indonesia, takraw has not changed greatly.
Men deftly keep aloft a hollow ball of woven rattan (about 8 inches in
diameter) with their feet. While some show off skill by repeatedly kicking
the ball upward, they eventually pass it to another. The rattan ball thus
soars around a circle in a cooperative game—creating a kind of airborne
consensus.

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177

Games of Adults

Congklak (cowrie shell) traces back to ancient Egypt as among the world’s
oldest known games. Likely introduced to Indonesia centuries back by
Indian or Arab traders, this game is as popular today as it was in the past.
Congklak consists of a long (roughly 18 inches) carved wooden board with
seven cup-like indentations on each side and one at each end. Initially, 98
cowrie shells, stones, or beads sit evenly divided in the recessions. The object
of this game is to move as many pieces into one’s “home” cup—the indented
space at the end of the board to the left. Congklak looks simple but requires
skill, strategy, and much practice. Wooden boards may be crudely carved or
elegantly crafted.
Board games like chess and checkers, likely introduced from India, engage
many Indonesians. Europeans chronicled these games in Java and Sumatra in
the early sixteenth century. Bataks of northern Sumatra consistently exhibit
the greatest prowess at chess in recent times.4 Chess imaginably appealed to
aristocrats early on by the character of its pieces (kings, queens, pawns, etc.)
and by the strategic battleﬁeld basis of the competition.
Probably introduced by the Chinese and later popularized by Europeans,
card games break out everywhere. Indonesians play many versions, including poker, canasta, euchre, card renditions of Chinese mah jong, and local
inventions. As do cockﬁghts, high betting offers exalted gain or crippling loss,
adding a perilous thrill for players. Islam and Christianity forbid gambling,
which seems to increase its enticement.
Dice may have come from India to Southeast Asia in ancient times.5 People
of the Malukus used dice by the mid-sixteenth century. A Javanese version
of the epic Mahabharata features the loss of the heroic, warring Pandawa
kingdom through a king gambling with the enemy using dice.6 As with cards,
Indonesians bet on dice games, which are especially popular at markets.
Divination and fortune telling are not only ritual practices, but also
leisure pursuits among friends. Indonesians seek answers to problems or
auspicious personal information through reading cards, throwing dice,
drawing and interpreting pictures, analyzing dreams, and mimicking
shamanistic techniques. Sharing future predictions intrigues many and
those who show skill enjoy popularity.
Games of Youth

Boys often own handcrafted wooden tops and hold contests for the longest
spin or for knocking another’s top over. An ancient toy in Indonesia, tops
often emit humming or whistling sounds and feature whirling attachments.

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Their antiquity and wide variation suggest that tops may once have functioned
at divinations or life rituals. They persist in popularity and cleverness of
design.
Some Indonesians hold a peculiar passion for kite ﬂying. In Bali, kites
shaped as dragons, gods, animals, and symbols ﬁll the skies in the dry
season. Masterly crafted of colorful waxed paper and bamboo supports,
they take innumerable shapes with extravagant long tails. Some kites
make sounds believed to echo celestial voices. Boys and fathers share in
a love and construction of kites. Some contests involve attempts to bring
other kites down, creating games of war. These “ﬁghting kites” have no
tails and their strings contain small bits of glass to sever strings of opponents. Boys develop strong emotional attachments to their special kites,
as do men with their favorite ﬁghting cocks. While pleasing their owners, kites provide imaginative, colorful, air-borne displays for all to enjoy
watching.
Marble matches absorb boys as a favorite pastime with friends. A popular game involves a small circle drawn on the ground. Players try to knock
marbles within the circle outward by using one marble from the outside.
Each tries to knock all marbles out of the enclosed space, including his own.
If a player succeeds in striking other marbles beyond the circle, but his own
remains within it, he forfeits his marble. The object is to strike out marbles
along with one’s own, then keep the other marbles. Boys enjoy collecting
marbles of all kinds.
Across the islands children play with hand-made, painted cars and trucks
of wood, plastic bottles, or even dried pomelo (like a grapefruit) skin. Usually
made by male relatives, these toy vehicles often include details such as windows and seats. Children pull them along by strings. Some suggest “folk art”
in their ingenuity, craft, charm, and color. As simple as they appear compared
to manufactured counterparts, Indonesian children delight in them. In fact,
many children happily walk with a small wheel on the end of a stick, a most
basic toy. Ordinary Indonesians can rarely afford to buy many factory-made
toys like dolls, trucks, or computerized games, yet their children’s lives seem
none the worse for it.
Young girls play a version of jump rope using parallel “ropes” actually
woven with rubber bands. In turns, each tries to leap over the incrementally
elevating ropes until they reach neck height. Some talented jumpers are able
to leap over these. As the ropes are soft rubber, girls are not apt to be scraped
if missing a jump. They also play games similar to jacks, using shells, bones,
or ceramic pieces. Most often, girls enjoy contests like hopscotch. They etch
game patterns onto the ground, then hop on one leg using stone markers for
their ﬁnish points.

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179

Often children inherit festival decorations or crafted animal forms from
rituals as toys. Javanese children love to receive the hobbyhorse-like props
ridden by men in ceremonies. These woven and painted make-believe
creatures add much to their imaginative play.
Favored Leisure Pursuits

Indonesians like to feel happy (senang), which overwhelmingly applies to
their free time. Activities can be simple or elaborate, as long as people senang.
Thus, leisure hours are less often spent on personal work projects than they
are on enjoying life. In their approach toward leisure as a means to happiness,
Indonesians may have the right idea.
Strolling (jalan-jalan) is a simple way to relax and nearly everywhere people
take lingering walks in the cool of late day. Along the way, they encounter
others, view neighborhood changes, or simply talk while walking slowly. The
habit of strolling compels Indonesians in cities and villages, as a completion
of the day. As they promenade, people ask where they are going, to which
they reply jalan-jalanâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a perfectly logical answer.
Snacking is a favorite Indonesian national pastime. People frequent shops,
kiosks, carts, and warungs to buy cookies, potato chips, candy, peanuts, fried
bananas, tahu and tempe, sweet ice dishes, and other treats. They then sit to
enjoy their snacks or return home to share food together. Snacking is fun,
inexpensive, and socialâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;made more pleasant by talk and joking.
Indonesian village women often do not sit completely idle when relaxing
with friends. They weave, sew, make basketry, spin cotton into yarn, or
embroidery, while talking with companions. Women frequently carry out
daily endeavors in groups, thus work time coincides with social time. Sharing
and voicing ethical opinions concerning tales or problems of their villages,
families, neighbors, and enemies; such talk spreads and becomes embedded
in local ideas and lore.
Most artisans continue polishing a carving, painting a mask, or twining
end threads on a textile as they visit with others. Some whittle, crochet, or
even husk corn while conversing. Aside from late at night or periods of hard
work requiring concentration, any time might be appropriate for socializing.
This affords a pleasant, relaxed feeling to those ďŹ nishing off their arts and
allows for other to give praise or suggestions.
Karaoke has been a craze across Indonesia for some time now. The humblest of outer island huts might contain a karaoke set, drawing neighbors in
the evenings to show their talents and imagine stardom. Songs range among
pop hits from both hemispheres. All lounges and even restaurants seem to
feature karaoke for Indonesian customers. In the 1999 presidential race, the

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ambitious candidate who opened the short-lived Warung Wiranto chain
across the islands (Chapter 5) also campaigned on television as a dashing
karaoke star. Whether this heralded his defeat remains speculative.
Films have long fascinated Indonesians. As with television, the Suharto
government strictly censored and determined content of movies.7 Now radio,
television, home videos, and DVDs are part of leisure life across the islands.
Indonesian ﬁlms sometimes adapt elements of other cultures. Still, the plots,
values, comic and tragic sensibilities, and emotionality are “profoundly
Indonesian.”8 One notes how Indonesian ﬁlms overwhelmingly center upon
order and disorder and do not feature absolute “bad guys.”9 This reﬂects
ancient, core outlooks—including ambiguity of thought and interpretations
not based in absolutisms. As in many other Indonesian arts and tales, there is
more than one right approach or analysis in most situations.
A demand for Western and pan-Asian ﬁlms increased since the loosening of
censorship following the New Order era. People especially relish action ﬁlms,
romances, and musicals. India’s Bollywood cinematic extravaganzas became
a craze in Indonesia, viewed in theaters and on televisions. Not surprisingly,
Indonesians delight in the rhythmic music, colorful costumes, good-looking
actors, and lavish musical sequences of these ﬁlms.
Controlled and censored by the Suharto family during the New Order
era,10 television programming grew far more liberal following the president’s
downfall. In fact, after his demise, television stations were ﬂooded with talk
shows and satires denouncing his leadership, family, and the corruption he
fostered. An explosiveness of media expression occurred in Indonesia after the
New Order, following years of suppression of free speech.
Indonesians owning televisions usually watch the evening news and take interest in world events. Soap operas are popular with many women. Those imported
from Mexico and dubbed in Indonesian hold special appeal, as they appear more
glamorous and racy than Indonesian productions. Men like American boxing
matches. Musical variety shows (including the recent Indonesian Idol inspired
by the production, American Idol), comedies, dramas, dubbed Indian epics,
“ethnic” performances from various island groups, and game shows entertain
Indonesian viewers. Television advertisements can be quite inﬂuential, as they
introduce modern products, play upon vanity, and champion popular culture.
Pornographic material from around the world now appears via magazines,
videos, and DVDs in even remote Indonesia. Wildly enticing and popular
with men, these frequently have fed misconceptions or ill-placed bravado
regarding sex. They also portray foreigners as lascivious and immoral. Banned
by religious leaders, pornography becomes all the more intriguing. Computers in public ofﬁces sometimes “crash” by an overload of surreptitiously
downloaded porn sites.

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181

FESTIVALS
Festivals as Processions
Power served pomp, not pomp power.11

Historically, rulers staged grand festivals to display their authority through
impressing the masses. These featured competitions, performances, dances,
music, and majestic parades. Spectacles of grandeur constituted the substance
of power of Balinese kingdoms. Ceremonies and magniﬁcent celebrations
publicly dramatized the “ruling obsessions of the Balinese culture: social
inequality and status pride. It was thus a theatre state in which kings and
princes were the impresarios, the priests the directors, and the peasants
the supporting cast, stage, crew, and audience.”12 Pageantry continuously
legitimized rulers and elites in Southeast Asia.
This carries on through processions like Balinese cremation ceremonies.
These may draw thousands and tremendous effort goes into massive decorations and construction of the requisite tower. Moreover, those attending
enjoy food and entertainment by gamelan orchestras. As predominant status
symbols for Balinese, cremations festivals perpetuate their ongoing value.
Processions shape a basic scheme for numerous festivals, elevating their
grandeur through dazzling pomp, color, music, and performances—paraded
before as many onlookers as possible. The cover of this book illustrates a
priestess in Bali carried aloft in a colorful procession. Sumatran Minangkabau
women stage lavish parades wearing distinctive head cloths of matrilineages.
Javanese family pageants follow weddings, displaying adorned brides borne on
palanquins and grooms following on horseback. Ritual processions between
villages mark marriages on many islands. These announce relations between
clan groups while ﬂaunting wealth and standing by the numbers of people
involved and their splendid costumes.
In central Java, grandiose parades honor the Prophet Mohammed’s birthday, called Maulud. Groups of men bear large platforms with decorated mountains of rice. Marching from palaces to mosques, accompanying multitudes
pray for community well being. People then take bits of the “mountain” as
blessings. Similar processions honor God with “ﬂoats” displaying rice molded
into male and female forms. At some stage of the parades, gamelan orchestras
resound, drawing yet larger crowds and creating greater spectacles.
In South Sulawesi, Muslims celebrate Maulud by honoring their Islamic
ancestors’ initial arrival to the island. Symbolic ships with sails of many colors
ﬂoat in procession on water. Later, cloth of the sails goes to the poor. Most
Islamic rituals emphasize giving alms to those in need, as this fulﬁlls one of
the ﬁve pillars of Islam, called zakah.

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Some Indonesians perform celebratory dances on boats as they sail to events
on other islands. Such colorful, sea-born processions animate waterways
between the Tanimbar Islands of the Maluku archipelago in eastern
Indonesia. As distances are not far between some islands, the seas become a
staging ground for ritual parades of boats and people, sailing ceremoniously
from one place to the next.
The Reog Ponorogo (Masked Dance of Ponogoro) procession of East
Java follows a cavalry of men on large, ﬂat hobbyhorses of woven, painted
bamboo. The central marcher wears a gigantic mask of a tiger’s face under a
heavy, bed-sized platform of peacock feathers. Masked dancers and musicians
follow. This boisterous parade celebrates local myths of the tiger and peacock
and the territory of Ponorogo and appears at all illustrious events.
People of East Sumba organize an enormous procession each year near the
end of the long dry season (often in November)—as restless heat weighs upon
villages awaiting the monsoon rains. Known as the “hungry season,” (musim
lapar), the past year’s food stores are growing depleted and rains must arrive
for gardens to grow. The necessary “Rain Prayers” require massive processions
and rituals to call down the rains. Early in the morning, men congregate at
the most ancient gravesite of the region. Thousands then march more than
3 miles to the sea—a human stream in ikat fabric—following Marapu priests
on horseback. None may eat or drink until nightfall. Finally, where a river
meets the sea, priests seek signs of mythical red crocodiles. People believe
that these amphibians swim up Sumba’s rivers, metaphorically symbolizing
sexual intercourse and fertilization. If sighted, the vast crowd grows wild
with excitement. Men then slaughter and cook water buffalos and drink
palm wine. By evening, the mood is raucously festive through the abundance
of rice, meat and wine. People say that rain usually falls within a week.13
Festivals of Faith and Happiness
“[W]e come upon the visible of other periods and it offers us company.”14

The most spectacular festive ritual held in Bali occurs to purify the world.
Called Ekadasa Rudra (roughly translated as “Eleven Directions of Evil”), this
transpires once every century at Bali’s most sacred temple, Besakih (the last
in 1979). The destructive side of the Hindu God Siwa (Shiva) is the “evil,”
which Balinese also honor. Thus, the dualism of good and evil becomes ritually
acknowledged as Balinese cosmology. Extraordinary shrines and towering altars
embellish Ekadasa Rudra, as do sumptuous throngs of people and dancers.
Wayang performances (celebrating many occasions) electrify the darkness of night (even using oil lamps!) as they captivate audiences under

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183

“Rain Prayers,” a procession of thousands of men in East Sumba calling down the rains in the
late dry season. 1994. Courtesy of Jill Forshee.

community pavilions or in private homes. Mystical and intimate in
atmosphere, these productions create close communal feeling and excited
anticipation. As people have known the wayang stories and characters for so
long, they become engrossed by any given performance. Divine personalities of the ancient Indian Ramayana and Mahabharata, now long localized
by Indonesians to their liking, perform to a gamelan orchestra. A quintessentially Indonesian musical grouping—a gamelan set includes gongs of
different sizes and tones, drums, ﬂutes, xylophones, stringed instruments,
and often male and female singers—altogether producing a richly ethereal,
otherworldly ambience.
Indeed, the enchanting effect of the music, voices, and characters of the
puppet play mesmerizes viewers, who often respond emotionally to particular
heroes or sequences. During battle scenes, the orchestra becomes explosively
loud and dramatic, enhancing each clash of weaponry and victory of
performing puppets through percussion. Performances typically go on until
dawn. As mentioned, “according to tradition, everyone at a wayang performance is safe from the evil inﬂuences that normally plague people.”15 Thus
an aesthetic, performative space becomes a sort of supernatural safety zone,
while entertaining all. The quality and extensiveness of the performance and
the number of people it attracts bestow honor upon its sponsors.

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The Islamic holy day of Idul Adha (Sacriﬁcial Feast) commemorates the
biblical story of God giving Abraham a ram to sacriﬁce in place of his son.
Idul Adha coincides with a day of sacriﬁce of goats and sheep by those
on the haj (pilgrimage) to Mecca. Indonesian Muslims ritually slaughter
goats on this day and then distribute meat to the poor, fulﬁlling a duty
to give alms.
Idul Fitri (Purifying Feast) follows the Islamic month of fasting, Ramadan,
called Puasa in Indonesian. During this time, nothing may pass through a
Muslim’s lips between dawn and dusk, including food, drinks (even water),
betel nut, or cigarette smoke. People then might partake of all in the evenings.
Many arise before dawn so as to eat and drink sufﬁciently to sustain them
through the day. Some Indonesians practice “partial Puasas,” by giving up
smoking or consuming little by day. Usually, Muslims of higher classes are
strictest regarding rules and practices of Puasa.
Idul Fitri provides a festive climax including extensive visiting and well
wishing. Many buy new clothes or hold special feasts on this day to rejoice
in the end of fasting. The most crucial ritual act of Idul Fitri, however, is
an individual plea for forgiveness following status differences. Young and
lower status people beg their superiors to pardon them for any offenses
(however inadvertent) they may have caused over the past year. This serves as
a community reprieve of ill feeling, honors elders and elites, and lightens any
sense of guilt for those asking forgiveness.
Nonetheless, much of the visiting carries a festive mood as all wear new
clothing and hosts provide sumptuous food for guests. Thus, humility,
mercy, and social status intermix during Idul Fitri gatherings. Christians
often also partake in the pleasant socializing of this time. Idul Fitri suggests
something of Christmas in its festive manifestations. Colored lights and gold
tinsel embellish Indonesian cities, much like holiday decorations in the West.
Jakarta never appears as festive or attractive as during Idul Fitri.
Indonesian Christians hold more rituals at Easter than at Christmas. This
likely reﬂects the historically local importance of rituals for the dead and
ceremonies honoring ancestors. Catholics of Larantuka in eastern Flores have
incorporated their own life cycle rituals with the birth and death of Christ
since their conversion in the sixteenth century. Easter inspires a devout vigil
for many Christians, beginning on Saturday night until the time of Christ’s
resurrection on Sunday morning.
Catholics of the Toba Batak mix traditional ritual dances with Christian
rituals. Asmats of West Papua receive Catholic communion in traditional
headdresses and face paint.16 Sumba’s Christians drape ikat textiles with cross
motifs over cofﬁns of their dead. A large cement Sumbanese rendition of
Christ clad in a traditionally worn ikat costume stands before a Catholic

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Church in the town of Waingapu. As always, newer world faiths overlay old
ways in ceremonies and imagery.
Christmas across Indonesia typically revolves around church events rather
than major festivities at home. People dress up and sing seasonal hymns but
rarely decorate their homes or buy and exchange gifts as in the West. Christmas is a time of socializing and people will take sweets to friends, sometimes
visiting several homes in succession. While a holy day, Christmas does not
carry the religious power of Easter.
The Non-Leisured Indonesians

Lest it seem that all Indonesians enjoy abundant leisure time, the opposite
condition is more often true. The poor cannot often afford the luxuries of
relaxation or recreation and spend their time seeking ways to survive, often at
minimal levels. Some parents work two to three jobs to support their families.
Many employed by industries—both Indonesian and multi-national—receive
almost no time off; some even sleeping at their work sites. Men and women
working at stores, hotels, or as housekeepers might work 12-hour days or
longer, seven days a week.
Foreign companies such as Nike have exploited cheap labor markets and
a general paucity of workers’ rights in Indonesia, while providing minimum
pay, long hours, unhealthy work environments, and none of the beneﬁts
Americans expect. In Irian Jaya (West Papua), the American-owned Freeport Mine’s contribution to the economic welfare of surrounding peoples
has been more than negated by its policy of irrevocably displacing them from
their lands and rendering regions toxic from industrial wastes. Multinational
companies have been protected by the Indonesian military, taking lives of
those protesting their presence and policies. Such abuses have continuously
fueled West Papua’s decades long independence movement.
A permanent yet resilient underclass has survived in Indonesia for many
centuries. These were the poor who built grand monuments to kings,
struggled for shelter through Suharto’s ill-conceived urban renewal projects,
and made their homes in shantytowns and garbage dumps. This continues, as
described in Chapter 4. In examining life across Indonesia, an honest general
description of festivals and leisure activities must take into account the
millions who seldom partake of them. Poverty represents the less-than-festive
side of Indonesian society. For years, Indonesian thinkers and commentators
persistently have expressed concern regarding problems of poverty and
international exploitation. The coming years will reveal whether equitable
or “democratic” social improvements take place or whether Indonesia will
carry on—notwithstanding its beauty and cultural richness—following a

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latter-day commercial feudalism. If so, the ruling lords will no longer be
regional sultans, kings, or even Indonesian leaders, but rather, expanding
corporate powers that currently seem to be inheriting the earth.
NOTES
1. See Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450–1680, Volume One:
The Lands below the Winds (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 189–190.
2. Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 199.
3. Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 199–200, paraphrased here.
4. See Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 198.
5. See Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 196.
6. See Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 196–197.
7. See Sen, Krishna and David T. Hill, Media, Culture, and Politics in Indonesia (South
Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press, 2000), 137–163. See also Karl Heider,
Indonesian Cinema: National Culture on Screen (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,
1991).
8. See Heider, Indonesian Cinema, 7.
9. Heider, Indonesian Cinema, 35, paraphrased here.
10. See Sen and Hill, Media, Culture, and Politics in Indonesia, 108–136.
11. Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1980), 13.
12. Geertz, Negara,13.
13. See Jill Forshee, Between the Folds: Stories of Cloth, Lives, and Travels from Sumba (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001), 181, 191, 192.
14. John Berger, The Shape of a Pocket (New York: Vintage Books, 2003), 21.
15. Alit Djajasoebrata, Shadow Theatre in Java: The Puppets, Performance, and Repertoire
(Amsterdam: The Pepin Press, 1999), 11.
16. See James J. Fox, ed., Religion and Ritual: Indonesian Heritage Series (Singapore:
Archipelago Press, 1998), 128–129.

8
Music, Dance, and Traditional
Theater
Music, dance, and traditional theater provide vitality, expression, and fulﬁll
ceremonial events. Indonesian performance arts emerge from deep roots in
ancient cultures and a pervasive practice of intricate group cooperation. These
arts demand mastery, attunement to subtlety, balance, and formal elegance.
They also lend themselves to innovation, multiple interpretations, and reﬂect
an Indonesian genius for adaptability and creating hybrid forms. This chapter brieﬂy touches upon the richness of music, dance, and traditional theater
of the Indonesian islands.1
MUSIC
Gamelan

Gamelan (meaning orchestra) ensembles epitomize Indonesian music to
much of the world. This distinctive composite of instruments probably took
form through an ancient merging of male drums and gongs sets with string
and wind instruments of female ensembles. At some point, men evidently
took over the playing of most instruments. Bali and Java—the centers of
gamelan—produce divergent styles of music. Gamelan elaborated through
court cultures in Bali and Java—where instruments took on lavish forms.
There are multiple styles of gamelan throughout these islands and discussion
of each is impossible here.
Javanese music tends to be soft and sustained in subtle compositions,
likened to a breeze across the senses by some. While relaxing and pleasurable,
gamelan is exceedingly complex and abstract in its performance and for those
trying to understand it. Elusiveness characterizes gamelan of Java, reﬂecting

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Gamelan orchestra of the court of the Sultan of
Yogyakarta, Java. 1990. Courtesy of Jill Forshee.

other aspects of its culture—such as social interaction, stories, and arts. The
astounding reality of most gamelan performances is that musicians play solely
by ear—without a score or conductor. These complex musical movements
can include up to 17 beats to a bar and some pieces accompanying dances
may contain 15 different harmonizing layers.
Gamelan instruments in Java carry deﬁnite pitches, corresponding to two
tuning systems. A complete gamelan set is actually two orchestras—never
played simultaneously, but sometimes alternately, within a performance.2
While often capable of seven tones, most ensembles use ﬁve tones following
a pentatonic scale. Javanese orchestras contain large gongs, xylophones, also
called metallophones (gender is a leading type) of diverse sizes and shapes
with large to small keys, and kettle gongs graduating in size along rows—all
cast in bronze. Large, elongated two-ended drums (kendhang), a two-stringed
bowed lute (rebab), a bamboo ﬂute (suling), and often male or female singers
complete the ensemble.
The rebab (lute) and gender (main xylophone) lead the melodies in ensembles, especially in softer sections of a performance. The gender also elaborates

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on melody while other metallophones complement, play in parallel octaves,
or enrich the music through low, abstract tones. Bronze kettle gongs mediate the music of other instruments and signal a change in the tempo. Large,
hanging gongs sound at the beginning and end of a piece and at speciﬁc
intervals within the arrangement. So subtle is the timing of these intervals
that some regard the sounding of the gong at the right moment as the most
difﬁcult skill in gamelan. Instruments fall into two sound groups: loud and
soft. Melodic instruments are usually soft, like the rebab, gender, and suling.
Gamelan ensembles usually include between 10 to 40 musicians.
Speciﬁc sections of an ensemble perform three functions: Singers and
instruments carrying the central melody, instruments controlling timing
of the music, and instruments underscoring the musical composition. As
concisely described, “Gamelan integrates a great variety of musical lines in
shifting degrees of aural clarity.”3
While exquisitely crafted and carved elegance distinguishes Java’s gamelan
instruments, Balinese prefer more baroquely carved designs. Gilded and often
painted red, gamelan ensembles in Bali play faster music with a more vibrant
tone. Balinese enjoy loud, rousing gamelan music, reﬂecting their exuberance
in ceremonial forms. Clashing cymbals characterize Bali style and men strike
metallophones with relatively large wooden mallets to increase their sound
level. The gender metallophone often sits over bamboo resonators to create
a more shimmering, vibrating sound.4 One unique type of Balinese gamelan
centers on long bamboo ﬂutes.
Tuning instruments in Bali follows two scale systems, but only one scale
for each ensemble. Villages, not individuals, own gamelan instruments. Each
village tunes its ensemble slightly differently so that instruments cannot be
traded or stolen and used elsewhere. Thus, each village maintains an exclusive
sound. Turning down a lane, one might encounter a group of young men
“jamming” together on gamelan instruments in a driveway. While in Java
gamelan typically appears at special occasions, the Balinese practice it constantly. Music drifts through the air in much of Bali, like part of the natural
environment.
Musical Bamboo

Easily available to Indonesians, bamboo is an excellent material for music.
Even standing in natural groves, bamboo responds to the wind with its own
peculiar sounds. Bamboo xylophones make up gamelan gambang (traditional
xylophone) of Bali, and musicians also use slit bamboo drums. In Sumatra,
Tapanuli music can involve grouped bamboo or wood xylophones playing
together. The sound differs greatly from metallophones, producing light,

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pleasantly resonant melodies. In Kalimantan, people fashion elaborately
shaped mouth organs of several bamboo pieces bound together (called kledi),
played through a carved perpendicular mouthpiece. Bamboo zithers make
music on a number of islands. Logical instruments for bamboo, ﬂutes take
their shapes from the material. Diverse sorts of bamboo ﬂutes produce melodies across the islands—from Sumatra to West Papua, where Asmat people
use wide bamboo sections as wind instruments. Well-crafted bamboo ﬂutes
from Makasar, South Sulawesi feature ﬂared ends made of a tight spiral of
lontar leaf, adding resonance to the instruments. The ubiquitous bamboo
ﬂute sounds across the archipelago.
An angklung consists of three or four bamboo tubes held together within
a bamboo frame. A player holds the instrument by the left hand and shakes
it with the right. Each loosely set piece of bamboo produces a different note.
Angklung ensembles contain at least 10 instruments suspended from one large
frame, a wooden xylophone, a large kettle gong and a larger hanging gong.
This type of ensemble is traditional in western Java.
Folk music of the Banyumas area bordering Central and West Java employs
diverse bamboo instruments, including ﬂutes and angklung. Calung is the newest of such music, using a wooden xylophone with bamboo instruments with
those of imported styles. Now becoming an eclectic, popular music, calung
blends styles from Java with Portuguese, Western, and Indian inﬂuences.
Some calung groups use a bamboo zither and ﬂute along with maracas, cymbals, and tambourines. Yet these all mix into a ﬁve-toned octave of gamelan
music, forming the basis of the compositions.5
Percussive Music

While some central Indonesian gamelan ensembles might be predominantly percussive, other islands and peoples deserve attention. In some regions, music is more percussive than melodic, which is not to say that melody
is absent. Yet ensembles in regions of outer island Indonesia are simpler than
those of courtly central cultures, play to local rituals and dances, and tend to
produce predominantly percussive music.
In eastern Indonesia iron gongs usually substitute for those of bronze.
Produced in a port town of Sumba from recast 50-gallon oil drums, these
relatively cheap gongs sell well locally and on neighboring islands. With a
sufﬁciently resonant sound, they often form the percussive base for music of
the Lesser Sunda Islands and beyond.
Drumming often predominates the music of these islands. In Timor,
Tetum women dance while beating small drums held under one arm. The
drums provide the rhythm of their dancing and cause a curved posture to

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their bodies as they gracefully move. In Sumba, variably tuned drums play
for days during funeral events and other ceremonies. Sumbanese also carry
out contests with different types of drums, including those imported from
other islands. A peculiar two-toned drum is found only in Sumba, made of
stretched deer hide on either end. Between the tympanic sides the base of the
drum contains about 100 wooden wedges, driven inward to lock together
and held in place by leather cords. To change the tone of a drum, the wedges
are either loosened or made tighter, altering the tension of the drumheads
and thus the sound. These porcupine-like instruments hang from trees or
stands and receive full forced beats, sometimes by women.
Sasak people of Lombok employ a basically percussive gamelan. This
ancient, traditional ensemble includes drums, cymbals, large gongs, and gong
chimes. Male dancers perform to the music, also playing heavy, long drums
strapped to their shoulders. They compete in drumming while showing physical strength and agility. Still, their music interlocks cooperatively as they
dance and strike dramatic postures. The dancing and drumming builds in
intensity until a gong sounds. This vibrant musical dance competition is one
of the few remaining traditional forms of the Sasak people.
Northern Sumatra contains numerous, rich drumming traditions. The
Toba Batak perform drum ensembles in which one man plays ﬁve long drums
melodically while another plays a sixth drum for accents and patterns of
rhythm. This type of tuned drum set is called taganing and is extremely rare in
the world.6 Yet the drumming is now seldom performed, as Batak say that the
sounds call down ancestral spirits, which many now fear (most Toba Bataks
are Protestant and have been dissuaded from animistic practices). This is but
one type of drum music that involves peoples of coastal Sumatra, Kalimantan,
and the Riau Islands, echoing a strong percussive tradition of Malay groups.
Distinctive drums of West Papua (Irian Jaya) are hourglass shaped, carved
in wood with a cassowary skin drumhead. Sacred drums of this shape from
the region of Lake Sentani play only at hidden ceremonies within exclusive
men’s houses. All drums of this region bear a carved, central band. This is
called a waist belt in local language and represents a similar belt worn by
headmen that bestows protective powers. As indigenous West Papuan peoples
have disputed their incorporation into Indonesia since the beginning, headmen and special powers hold profound importance to the present as people
feel little sense of belonging to a nation state—and powerless within it. In
their own societies, Papuan men are secretive of rituals in men’s houses.
Thus, while anthropologists have recorded certain ceremonies, much
remains hidden of the special music and beliefs of peoples of Irian Jaya.
Such drums beat away from outsiders, defying typically Indonesian notions
of ceremony.

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Singing

A style of folk singing called tangis (“to cry”) is popular in Sumba. This
may have evolved from the “keening” dirges women traditionally sing for
the dead. Keening sounds like combined crying and singing—a sort of rising
and falling wailing with an underlying tune. Two-stringed lutes (jungga)
accompany sad ballads of loss, parables, or the lovelorn.
Yet some have compared this droned singing, in Sumba and Roti, to
songs of eastern Arnhemland in Northern Australia. Peoples of these regions
sing in a descending vocal pattern. Songs of lamentation in Sumba might
compare to those of the Yirrkala people of Arnhemland, as remarked by
a Sumbanese man.7 While people of Sumba have never been seafaring to
any extent, ﬁshermen of Roti long have traveled far in their boats. Trepang
(sea cucumbers), an Asian delicacy, were abundant in northern Australian
waters and drew many Indonesians to Arhemland’s shores in ancient times.
As Sumba and Roti sit relatively close to Australia, and Rotinese have long
ventured to sea, such inﬂuences were possible.
In Flores women perform a type of choral singing remarkably similar to that
of the Balkans. Indeed, some theorize that migrations of Balkan peoples in
prehistoric times culminated in parts of eastern Indonesia. While this cannot
be proved, Europeans possibly migrated to the Lesser Sunda Islands (Nusa
Tenggara Timur) bringing artifacts, types of song, and musical instruments
(such as the lute). That such ancient links insinuate through music makes it
all the more compelling to study.
Popular Music

Playing instruments and singing melodies together is universal among the
young. Batak play a two-stringed lute (hasapi) in a quickly plucked, mandolin
style. Their songs follow the tempo as lively folk music. This is typical in many
parts of Indonesia, where people often play guitars or lutes and sing. Among
the Bugis in rural villages or small towns in South Sulawesi, group singing
with two-stringed plucked lutes has become a common pastime. Some groups
practice and develop their music and singing to the point that they play at
special events. In Sumba people play lutes and mouth harps while others sing.
Like the young who play gamelan in back lane Bali, youth across Indonesia
get together to make music, from relatively traditional styles to pop and rock
hits. The city of Ambon (in the Maluku archipelago) developed a special type
of folk singing incorporating ukuleles, creating a unique “islander” sound.
Ambon music has become a unique style on international recordings, featured
in the American production, “Steeling around the World Hawaiian Style.”

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Keroncong and dangdut are relatively contemporary popular music types
in Indonesia. Some Indonesians consider that keroncong began through
Portuguese inﬂuence in a speciﬁc part of Jakarta, developing through the
twentieth century. Modern ensembles include a guitar, ﬂute, violin, ukulele,
banjo, cello, two small lutes, and string bass. The ﬂute, violin, or lead singer
carries the melody. Keroncong instruments are all plucked, so that a cello
produces rhythm, as does a drum. Syncopated rhythms of differing lengths
characterize this music. Keroncong appeals largely to an older generation from
the times of national independence. Nostalgic and slow in tempo, it sings of
nationalistic pride, nature, and times past. Keroncong likely sounds “corny” to
the younger generation, who thrive on international pop music, Indonesian
rock stars, or the enticing dance rhythms of dangdut.
Dangdut wafts on buses, streets, and markets throughout the archipelago, although its appeal is ostensibly to relatively poor Muslim youth.
It carries rhythms inspired by Indian, Malaysian, and Arabic inﬂuences, yet
adapted to a Western scale. Beginning in the 1950s, (as did all Indonesian
pop music) dangdut has continuously absorbed new inﬂuences to the
point of becoming a form of rock. Rhythms of dangdut are sensual and
syncopated, often accompanying a popular dance from Malaysia called
joget. This undulating dance moves with graceful restraint to the rhythms,
using arm and hand motions evocative of classical dances. Joget dancers
often shift their heads from side to side in time to the music. Young men
especially like to show off their talents at dancing, and joget permits dancing alone, with someone else, or in a line. While the tempo is vibrant,
dangdut lyrics are melancholic and yearning and often sing of broken
hearts. (In fact, another pop genre is called cengeng lagu—“whining songs”
of broken hearts!) Rhoma Irama is a famous contemporary dangdut star,
whose lyrics carry critiques of modern social problems, while bringing the
musical form into the rock genre.
Iwan Falls and his band Kantata Samsara have been beloved rock stars
for years in Indonesia. His many hits successfully combined Indonesian
and Western rhythms and scales, producing resonant and even elegant
hybrids enjoyed by many Westerners. Currently, new faces dominate the
pop music scene. One vivacious young woman, Ully Sigar, composes and
sings songs completely focused upon environmental awareness. Colorful,
eccentrically dressed, and animated, she has become a new pop icon in
Indonesia.
Ingenious Indonesian composers have created scintillating fusions of
gamelan with Western classical, jazz, or pop elements. These make use of
electronic media and computers and some fusion music especially highlights
the adaptability of gamelan with other musical forms.

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DANCE
Mask Dancing

Masks (topeng) deﬁned characters at the courtly dance dramas of Javanese
kings. In fact, these masks largely were about glorifying kings past and present
and their heroic deeds. To this day, many masked dramas of Java tell of
Panji, an adventurous prince of long ago embodying all Javanese ideals of
noble reﬁnement. Against all odds, Panji triumphs in the end. As with puppet characters, the precise physical features of a Panji mask make him readily
identiﬁable to the audience. These performances include arrays of masked
characters, many paralleling those of the shadow play.
In Bali, masks invigorate most festivals and sacred rituals. Balinese invariably
strive toward drama and elaboration in their arts and the island’s extraordinary
masks reﬂect this. The most dramatic and world-famous masked characters
are the Barong, a fabulous and morally good creature from the underworld,
and its counterpart Rangda, a powerfully evil witch who plagues villages. The
Barong inevitably wins in the end after much music, dance drama, and audience excitement.
Such elaborate masks include human or horsehair, shredded leaves of
plants, carved teeth, colorful fabric, real or simulated gold, and many layers
of paint. The Barong incorporates a full body costume of gold-painted leather
and leaf strips. Worn by two people, the fantastic creature resembles a hybrid
lion, a caterpillar, and a fabulous Chinese festival dragon. Rangda wears a
raging mane of hair and a ferocious face, with bulging eyes, long fangs, and
a hanging tongue—features symbolic of wildness and devilry in Bali. While
these masked beings clearly deﬁne good and evil, the stories they enact are not
simple. Rather, “[t]he barong performance is the expression, through theater,
entrancement, and celebration, of the whole complex of the Balinese mythic
and religious world—the choreography involves not just a troupe of dancers
and musicians, but a whole village.”8
Other masked dance dramas in Bali tell babad (meaning “history” or
“chronicle”) tales—ancient stories based upon genealogies. These provide
cores around which performers weave improvisations demonstrating the relevance of the tale to more recent events.9 According to one scholar, masks are
the only visual forms that represent the babad tales in Bali dramas.10 Yet, their
stories often contain new renditions or invented episodes and thus continue
to reﬂect both historical and modern concerns and shifts.
The Hudoq ritual mask dance of East Kalimantan Dayaks begins riceplanting season and celebrates the harvest. Of a style and elaboration seen
nowhere else, the masks represent crop pests or fearsome beasts to scare off
evil spirits. Consisting of numerous parts in wildly diverse shapes, these masks

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The Barong exits a temple compound in Bali to take
part in a dance drama. 1992. Courtesy of Jill Forshee.

are masterpieces of imagination and craft. Some bear delicately carved swirls
extending beyond the body, some feature intricate beadwork combined with
other materials, and others have upright feather crowns. Some masks extend
to a full body costume of banana leaves or grass. Usually 11 dancers perform
the Hudoq ceremony to the sounds of gongs and a small drum. Hand and
feet movements create the dance, as arms ﬂy upward then slap down and feet
stamp upon the ground. One foot crosses the other with each stamp, causing bodies to sway. Dancers thus proceed in a circle until they have covered
the arena. Finally, they sit in the center waiting for spirits to possess them. A
twitch of bodies signals possession and they stand to dance once more. When
ﬁnished, they sit and all present regard the spirits as departed. The entire
ceremony takes lead from a ritual specialist.
The Asmat of West Papua wear masks evoking the costume of the Balinese
Barong. The jipai covers the head and body to the legs. Head sections are of
wood, but the body mask might be woven, with extending grasses at the bottom.
These are secret creations in men’s houses as part of months-long preparations.
Eventually, a jipai covers a man who wants to make contact with his ancestors,

during a special event commemorating the departed. The masked ﬁgures perform dances before the men’s house at various times during the special day.
Dances of Bali

Many regard the legong as Bali’s most elegant dance form, accompanied
by gamelan. This secular dance graces temple anniversaries while increasingly
performed for tourists. Three pubescent girls become tightly bound at the
torsos by wrapped fabric, then embellished with gorgeous costumes of
exquisite gold neckpieces and cloth panels over colorful silk sarungs. Crowned
with golden headgear bearing frangipani blossoms, the girls perform a
graceful dance of largely arm and hand movements, while shifting their heads
and moving their eyes expressively. The central dancer provides the most
animation while the others follow her dance in perfect synchrony. The tight
binding adds grace to the dancers’ motions, causing their bodies to arch and
sway as they move their feet. Near the end of the dance, the music grows loud
and frenzied and the girls dance more vigorously to its doubled tempo.
The baris gede is a sacred dance involving a number of dancers depicting great
warriors and performed at temple anniversaries and cremation ceremonies.
The baris tunggal is a secular dance by one man presented for entertainment.
Males of all ages perform these dances. All wear a conical headdress of
glittering leaves, metallic inlays, or shells and opulently embellished silver,

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Legong dancers in Bali. Courtesy of M. J. Adams.

gold, and white costumes. Movements involve rapidly darting, intense eye
movements (implying vigilance); elegantly lifted, bent legs (often sustained
in pose); and upturned toes. Men dancing the baris master exquisite grace in
their ﬁnger movements, which ﬂicker and curve upward.
Bali’s most internationally famed dance is the kecak (monkey dance).
Walter Spies, an inﬂuential European artist, choreographed it in 1931. The
indigenous Balinese, nonetheless, made the kecak dance their own. The kecak
resembles a human mandala. About 100 men sit in a circle surrounding one
or two women, who dance in fetching postures. Often the only accompaniment is the loud, frog-like sounds the men emit in syncopated harmony, with
interludes of individual singers. The men never rise, but sway back and forth
and lean back to lying positions while continuing their rhythmic chants. The
dance is a spectacle unlike any other.
Javanese Dances

sarungs with trailing fabrics. The also make use of gossamer sashes to create or enhance motions. In gold headdresses they demonstrate ideals of
perfection through almost imperceptibly subtle movements of a ﬁnger or
foot. The bedhaya only recently was performed outside of palaces of Central Java. As a sacred heirloom of Central Javanese courts, women danced
the bedhaya in palaces on special occasions. Indonesians believe that Sultan
Agung of Mataram created this dance form in the early seventeenth century. Young boys in women’s garb originally performed the dance. This
ancient dance carries on through a selection of nine dancers deemed most
reﬁned and beautiful in the region. Filled with subtle symbolism, the bedhaya epitomizes reﬁnement in Central Java. Through slow movements,
dancers create a tranquil atmosphere of solemnity and wellbeing.11 Long
silken sashes enhance graceful gestures as dancers deftly hold or shift the
fabrics with delicacy.
The serimpi dance also developed centuries back in Central Java courts.
Usually four female dancers perform this dance, in various renditions
composed and choreographed during reigns of different rulers. The oldest
known form of serimpi dates to the late eighteenth century.
Serimpi dances also make use of ﬂowing sashes and enact set postures such
as sitting, standing while rearranging positions of sashes with gracefully bent
knees, and an upright stance with an extended arm holding a Javanese kris
(a curving, slender dagger symbolizing power of rulers). This dance and its ideal
postures and movements are still used in Javanese courts to train princesses in
grace and balance.
Randai of West Sumatra

The traditional narrative dance drama of randai of the Minangkabau region
of western Sumatra is embedded in complex cultural systems. Long following
the custom of rantau, young Minangkabau men have left their villages to
gain wealth and experience, and prestige upon return. This tradition “is
thematically woven through the practice and content of randai.”12 Randai was
preparation for the rantau, allowing elders to educate young men in proper
conduct, expectations, and what to avoid on their 6- to 12-month journeys.
Randai is both dance and theatrical performance. As noted by Craig Latrell
in his Asian Theatre Journal article, “Widening the Circle”: “Since almost
every randai story includes an episode in which the hero vanquishes comic
villains using pencak silat, performances even today provide an opportunity to
show off and perfect moves through hand-to-hand combat and dagger (keris)
ﬁghting.13

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A randai performance takes the shape of people sitting or moving around a
circle. A musical ensemble accompanies the event, consisting of a ﬂute, lute,
small gongs, and drums. Before each scene, dancers perform in a ring, clapping
hands and slapping legs. A song becomes the narration and actors sitting in
the center of the ring engage in dialogues. All others remain squatting around
the circle deﬁning the perimeter of the performance. Costumes are black or
white trousers, loose, and low-crotched. Mandarin collared shirts, beaded
headcloths, and large sashes around waists complete randai apparel.
A form of folk entertainment, randai occurs after harvests or at special
events. Randai works in complement to the rantau and the matrilineal system
of the Minangkabau. The circle is eminently important to Minankabau
culture, in that “it may symbolize unity, inclusiveness, or the union of
seen and unseen halves of the cosmos.”14 Circles or enclosed sacred spaces
mark dances and rituals throughout Indonesia. Inclusion within a bounded
social world is a prime Indonesian value. It then follows that “randai’s
lingkaran [circle] expresses in performance terms something essential to the
Minangkabau, which is repeated over and over in different ways in other
areas of the culture.”15 This repetition of meaningful motifs binds many
Indonesian societies to their pasts and their presents, empowering them to
adapt to their futures.
The Padoa Dancers of Savu

Another circular dance takes place on the small eastern Indonesian island
of Savu, beginning in the dry season and lasting through the harvests. The
padoa dancers creatively generate their own vivid percussion. They dance
with rhythmic footwork wearing small palm leaf boxes attached to their
feet, ﬁlled with grains or beans. These make rattling sounds and add liveliness and tempo to the dance. These ancient dances feature young men and
women circling in their ﬁnest ikat fabrics, denoting clans. A man sings a
song in the center of the circle, then dancers repeat it as they link arms and
continue their rhythmic circling. The padoa furnishes the ideal opportunity for ﬂirting and courtship among the young dancers, which energizes
everyone. Circles might include 30 men and women, circling to generate
community feeling and good will of ancestors toward their harvests, in the
driest region of Indonesia.
Circles dances take place among the Toraja of Sulawesi, people in East
Sumba, the Tetum and other groups of Timor, on Solor, and beyond.
Whether for harvest or in celebration, these events seem quintessentially
Indonesian in symbolizing the signiﬁcance of community and the ongoing
cyclic nature of life.

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Padoa dancers of Savu provide their own rhythm with palm leaf boxes attached to their feet,
ﬁlled with dried beans or gains. 1993. Courtesy of Jill Forshee.

THEATER
Wayang Puppet Theater

Wayang performances originated, by many accounts, in Java, where
people blended Indian legends with local ones. A stone inscription from
central Java dating from 907 a.d. mentions a “wayang performance held
in honor of the gods.”16 Many of the colors and motifs of wayang puppets
derive from the pasisir (coastal trading) culture of northern Java, inﬂuenced
more than other Indonesian regions by Chinese trade and aesthetics. Rich
in artistic inﬂuences and vibrant innovations, pasisir culture produced
amalgamated, elegant, and distinctive art forms that spread to the court
cultures of central Java.
The wayang became based in what are called purwa stories; ancient tales
depicting celestial occurrences, the divine, and a course of events considered predestined as a part of cosmic law. Wayang purwa originally appeared
only in Java and Bali, and other places where Javanese people settled, such
as southern Sumatra, south Borneo (Kalimantan), and Surinam17 (South
America via Dutch colonialism).
Skilled and ingenious puppet masters, called dalang, bring the puppets
to life through complex movements and speaking and singing in an

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203

astounding range of voices—from an evil old witch to a reﬁned young
woman to a noble warrior-hero. The puppeteer also manipulates a number
of wayang at once, quickly shifting his voice to represent his range of
characters. All of the puppets in a performance stand lined up, impaled
(by their supporting sticks) into a soft banana plant trunk. The dalang
selects them as needed for their parts in the drama and then returns them
to the trunk.
Like other Indonesian arts, wayang characters and performances involve a
moral dimension and function to remind people of the right and wrong ways
to behave in this world. Thus, evil and good deﬁne the plots and characters of
wayang plays. Some people believe that these performances emit a protective
power, with certain plays chasing off evil spirits.18 An ongoing belief in spirits
permeates these events, persisting from ancient animist ideas of the world, yet
making full sense in modern times.
All puppets and props conform to categories—nobles, servants, villains,
animals, heroes, sacred trees, and mountains that follow, in varying degrees,
the concepts of reﬁned (halus) or coarse (kasar) in their aesthetic features.
Speciﬁc characters might appear within a performance as several different
puppets, depicting changing moods and circumstances. Audiences, however,
will still recognize each character by hairstyle, size, body type, stance, and
facial features, not to mention the speciﬁc voices of the dalang. The nobler
the character, the more elongated and slanted the eyes become, with the nose
correspondingly long and slender, and nearly closed mouths with thin lips.
Opposite types of features distinguish less elite puppets, progressing from
unpolished commoners to hideous ogres. Positions of heads also indicate
qualities of character. A bowed head signiﬁes a calm, patient, dedicated
personality—high virtues in Java. A head held high evokes the opposite
traits—impatience, aggression, and irritability—negative personal attitudes
in Java.19
Wayang puppets evoke ancient ideals of perfection for men and women.20
The heroic characters Arjuna (from the Mahabarata) and Rama (from the
Ramayana) represent the noblest of male attributes, while their feminine
counterparts, such as Sita (Ramayana) and Rara Ireng (Mahabarata) embody
culturally ideal qualities for women. Many Indonesians love and even emulate
these heroes and heroines, who have never become irrelevant and carry roles
in current ﬁlms and television shows.
Over the centuries, new ideas and characters have entered the wayang
repertoire. Special styles developed in places like Yogyakarta and Solo
(Surakarta) in Java, following tastes and desires of rulers. As have other arts,
the puppets and stories have always changed with the times. Balinese puppets
are more realistic than those from Java, which distort their depictions of

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humans and animals. Indeed, the heads of many Javanese shadow puppets
resemble side views of hands as they attempt shadowed faces on walls (similar
to how many Westerners entertain children). This peculiar misshaping of
human heads may result from Islamic prohibitions on representations of
people or animals, creatures that only God may create. Unlimited by such
rules, Bali Hindus are more innovative as well as realistic with their puppet
designs.
Signiﬁcantly, the wayang cast also includes clowns. Serious performances
contain interruptions as clowns enter the shadow screen stage and provide
comic relief, enacting an opposite mood and reestablishing balance for an
emotional audience after tragic or dramatic scenes. This repeatedly demonstrates the importance of equilibrium in Indonesian arts and life. One notes
that “the Javanese word for clown (badut) is derived from badot, meaning
‘healer.’ Both groups are thought to be inspired by higher powers.”21 Clowns
thus “heal” some of life’s sorrows.
Semar is the major wayang clown and the eldest of his family and
cohort. Originally a God himself, he was sent to earth to guide the hero
in a story through various hardships. Paradoxically, Semar personiﬁes the
physical opposites of Javanese or Balinese ideals of reﬁnement. Fat and
misshapen, with ever-running eyes and nose and an immense backside,

The bulbous clown Semar (right) and his son Petruk. American Society for Eastern Arts,
Courtesy of David Weitzman.

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205

he uncontrollably breaks wind. His ﬂatulence incites hilarity throughout
the audience. At times, another puppet repeatedly whacks his behind
with a stick, a standard source of laughter. Although at ﬁrst Semar might
appear as a foolish “slob,” he is perhaps the most loved character among
the entire wayang cast. Semar is gross, magical, mysterious, powerful,
loyal, wise, and always morally good. He counterbalances the elegant
characters of righteousness by his distinctive appearance and idiosyncrasies.
As remarked of ironies surrounding Semar:
Semar, for all his great potency, not only must play servant to high-status ﬁgures, but
he must put up with the constant insults, teasing, and tricks to which his sons subject
him … to their own father they are rude and hostile in a manner both scandalous and,
to spectators, vastly entertaining … [they] treat Semar with a kind of jocular scorn out
of kilter with all the notions of respect for one’s elders Javanese normally espouse.22

9
Social Customs and Lifestyle: An
Epilogue
We are not so deep by nature that it will break anyone’s head to understand our
wisdom. There is no word for selﬁshness in our language. Happy language where that
word has never penetrated.1

SOCIAL CUSTOMS IN PRESENT TENSES
In 1993, an American anthropologist and her husband traveled by ferry to
one of Indonesia’s remote islands, Savu. A small craft took them near the
shore. Several yards from the beach, local men chest deep in water surrounded
the boat. Passengers began to climb upon their shoulders, luggage and all. The
Americans followed, dismounting on the sand feeling both guilt and amusement. The island was quiet at the time, without electricity. There were no
ﬂights to Savu, few tourists, and overnight ships from larger islands provided
the sole passage. Late in the day, they took a walk along a white beach.
As is customary in rural Indonesia, a band of children trailed behind
them. When the couple sat, the group stood before them, staring and stiﬂing giggles. The anthropologist greeted the children in Indonesian, asking their ages. All fell into hushed confusion. A sprightly seven-year-old
girl stepped forward, delivering standard questions Indonesian children ask
foreigners who know their language: “Where do you come from?” “How
many children do you have?” “What is your profession?” “Are your parents
still living?” “Do you like Indonesia?” On this day, however, a new query
supplemented the interrogation: “Is Mike Tyson still in prison?”

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Early that evening at their modest hotel (owned by Yemenite descendants),
a generator ﬁred up. Machines followed in sputters around the small town
of ﬁsher folk and traders and Seba became illuminated and lively. Sounds
of cassettes and televisions wafted down the lanes. People strolled along the
main sandy avenue, enjoying the cool air and greeting others. Across from the
hotel, under a festively decorated pavilion, a singing contest between young
Muslim boys commenced. An audience of well-dressed parents sat on folding
chairs under ﬂuorescent lights, proudly watching their sons. In turn, each
boy covered his ears with his hands and wailed renditions of the Muslim call
to prayer. An enclave of Bugis residents was holding this special event in the
town center of a largely Protestant island. The affair continued into the night,
while others watched with interest or went on with their own activities.
On this small island, a range of diverse social customs became evident.
Customary questions asked of foreigners, the time of day the generators
routinely started, a contest based in Islamic practice doubled as an enjoyable social get-together—the most pervasive social custom in Indonesia. The
Protestants of the community demonstrated customary Indonesian religious
tolerance, indeed many showed polite interest, toward an Islamic event.
Only the part about the men carrying people to shore from the boat remains
obscure, yet undoubtedly reﬂected relative social status, which always inﬂuences Indonesian customs.
The real surprise was how far-ﬂung the issues of American popular culture
and media had become. What did these children know of the boxer Mike
Tyson and had they opinions about his imprisonment for rape? Evidently
the boxer’s fate concerned some people in Savu. In fact, Tyson had become
a local hero through the media. As in other parts of Indonesia, following
American boxing matches was now a contemporary custom for some on this
island.
“LIFESTYLE” IN INDONESIAN CONTEXTS
Social customs across Indonesia are as countless as “lifestyle” is indeﬁnable
in a concise sense. The (necessarily limited) range of cultures and customs
described in this book precludes a uniﬁed deﬁnition of Indonesia. In fact, such
a deﬁnition is impossible. Lifestyle, however, implies a more arbitrary choice
than does custom. Lifestyle is self-constructed, drawing from the options and
styles available. In a modern Indonesia, lifestyles have developed emphasizing
choice, style, and technology—and building upon ancient attitudes permitting ﬂux and new expressions.
In Indonesian urban environments, lifestyle might suggest golﬁng, going
out to restaurants and nightclubs, and owning nice cars or motorcycles.

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209

These are eminently modern ways of spending time and money in Indonesia,
largely limited to an elite class. Although elites of times past enjoyed the best
of everything, their choices still involved largely materials and entertainment
options of traditional culture (however many foreign inﬂuences it included).
Tommy Suharto, the former president’s wayward son, ﬂaunted a notorious
lifestyle of fast cars, clubbing, and cocaine. This also led to arranging the
murder of a judge and eventually put him in prison. To most Indonesians,
the junior Suharto’s lifestyle bared the vulgar underbelly of Western-style
modernity in perverse blend with entrenched New Order corruption.
Yet, lifestyle options offer positive opportunities to the creative and nonconventional. The modern visual art, literary, and musical movements of
Indonesia evolved from people who carried out something besides typical
ways of life. All involved breaking with social customs and creating images,
prose, or music of something “other” in the face of conservative societies or
repressive regimes. All required audacity.
Certainly, Pramoedya Toer did not relish his lifestyle as a novelist and
political critic during his long years of imprisonment in Buru Island’s penal
colony. Yet he wrote his famous Buru Quartet under such conditions. After
his release, Toer expressed from his Jakarta home long-pondered views on
lifestyle and simple ways to happiness:
I came to know well the mind, heart, and even the hypocritical face of the New
Order regime. I learned many ways of maintaining my health at almost no cost; that
life is actually very simple but has been made complex by a small group of authoritarian people for a glittering lifestyle; that the slaughter Indonesia experienced is a
demonstration of cannibalism, of an animal devouring its foe just to make itself feel
stronger. Then, too, I also learned that a smile, even a false smile, is an antidote for
stress and feelings of hopelessness, that even as it relaxes one’s muscles, it serves to
sooth one’s nerves.2
Senang-Senang

Senang-senang (being content, relaxed, and happy) can be an ideal of living, if
not a sustained lifestyle. On many islands, people congregate on porches or balé,
sitting on woven tikar mats. Often no other furniture elevates the high-ranking,
so people of lower status or the young sit at the edges in social deference. People
invite others to their homes by asking them to come to their porch or ﬂoor. By
evening, groups congregate—playing cards, eating, talking, and laughing by kerosene or ﬂuorescent lamplight. Floors of homes serve the living: vibrant, visceral,
and stained by the stuff of life—food, betel spit, and the occasional accident. A
minimum of furniture leaves ﬂoors sharply deﬁned as social foundations, while
accenting the superiority of sacred, upper regions of households.

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Much gaiety and outright hilarity animates these spaces, especially when
hosting guests. Social customs throughout Indonesia require hosts to immediately offer guests coffee or tea. To refuse creates insult. The same applies to
betel nut, which often arrives before drinks. People love to tell and hear stories;
the more bizarre or ludicrous the better. Immensely rich with themes ancient
and recent, the persistence of Indonesian folklore “tells” custom—especially
through tales of breeching it—thus reinforcing its value. People also enjoy
sparring and poking fun at one another. Laughter is a favorite Indonesian
pastime and can become uproarious. As a great social leveler, laughter draws
all ages and ranks into shared enjoyment. Like Southeast Asians in general,
Indonesians display a broad tolerance (and even enjoyment) of eccentricity. If
anything, eccentric people stimulate good stories.
In cities, people also sit on porches or walkways at night, similarly greeting
others and getting together for games or chats. Within (ever-threatened)
urban kampungs, modest ways of life reﬂect those in provincial regions. People
offer drinks and snacks, chew betel nut or smoke, and enjoy neighborhood
amiability. Socializing is Indonesia’s most widespread and spontaneous social
custom, readily available and relatively free of cost.
Parties (pestas) or grandiose spectacles (perayaans) are ongoing customs,
regardless of holidays. Elaborate ornamentation, abundance of good food,
and entertaining music create successful celebrations. Indonesians prefer public
places with a lively (ramai), festive ambience. If too quiet, guests dismiss a
place as kurang ramai (not lively) and leave in pursuit of more spirited places.
As do houses and people, everything should exude spirit (semangat) no matter
how modern or urban.
LASTING SOCIAL CUSTOMS
Among some groups, modern times have all the more accentuated the
priority of older cultural forms, rather than rendering them obsolete. This
precedence emphasizes the inviolable value people place upon local identity
and social belonging and their crucial positions in the cosmological order.
A resurgent expression of local pride and prestige symbols has stimulated a
big comeback of old-style, hand chiseled, and human dragged stone megaliths in Sumba. Balinese cremation ceremonies have never been grander and
children diligently study traditional dances. Gamelan is an increasingly popular musical form spreading around the world, yet fundamental to cultures
and customs in Java and Bali, where it retains tremendous value. Further, the
ancient supremacy of ﬁne boatbuilding and seafaring from South Sulawesi
sails on through current grand races in Indonesian waters. To maintain indispensable aspects of their humanity, Indonesians pick and choose from what

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211

modernization offers them. In this way, important elements of older, local
cultures remain stubbornly resilient.
Through troubled political and economic times, Indonesians returned to
time-honored ways of doing things. The terrorist bombings in Bali prompted
a groundswell in prayers, offerings, and ceremonies across the island, as people
reﬂected on their neglect of the sacred during years of commercial prosperity
through tourism. Today it seems that more processions than ever ﬁll Bali’s
lanes, as people carry offerings to temples. While tourism has waned, people’s
needs, beliefs, and arts go on—drawing from deeper roots and recreating
culture and life.
DYNAMIC CUSTOMARY FORMS
Social status and rank remain critical in Indonesia, despite many years of
alleged democracy. True rank carries sumptuary privileges that still rely upon
traditional forms of regalia, most evidently in clothing. Customary dress also
identiﬁes where people “belong” across the islands. Clothing of contemporary global style places those who wear it with as much deﬁnition as do adat
garments. Like technology, it mediates a shift to the modern in appearance
and partially in thought.3 Technology (through computer games, iPods, television, etc.) also induces distraction—an insular “buzz” away from life’s tangible perils and joys.
Indonesian technocrats were the handmaidens of the New Order, whose
mechanisms induced ongoing distraction from the somber realities of the
nation’s people. While they created much of great beneﬁt across the islands,
they also squandered millions on ill-conceived technological monstrosities
beneﬁting only investors, many left unﬁnished and in decay. Still, Indonesians
were not naïve regarding this wastefulness and many ridiculed or opposed
government projects, even when Suharto’s political position was solid. Many
did not aspire to all things modern, technological, or “advanced,” especially
the poor. The corruption, pollution, deforestation, homelessness, drugs, street
violence, crime, and other plagues of the industrialized world have weighed
heavily upon Indonesia. After years of tumult and economic woes, many value
their cultures and customs all the more. This feeds a resurgence of customary
forms, including those that people make by hand or perform for an audience.
Cloth is what numerous women best make and has always brought them
pride. Just as women affect the balance of social life, the weaver producing
smoothly woven cloth is an exemplary model of female posture in much of
Indonesia. As a consistent focal point of their vision, dexterity, and imagination, cloth has long been a “canvas” for expression, devotion, and even
passion for many. Yet women also defy the exemplary and assert other powers

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in life. As customary managers of household ﬁnances, many became cleverly
entrepreneurial during the economic crisis of the late 1990s. Now the traditional position of staying at home has become passé for some, as they travel
for trade and business and enjoy wider connections.
In Sumba in 1993, however, cloth enhanced an alternative “exemplary
model” of the feminine while enhancing eccentricity and passion. A certain
banci (transvestite) named Willem worked at a small family warung in the
eastern town of Melolo. From behind a lace curtain, he played vintage tapes
of Diana Ross and the Supremes as he cooked for customers. The curtain
suddenly sweeping aside, Willem would make a dramatic entrance, then
carry food to a table. Dressed in a ﬂoral sarung, a woman’s silk blouse, and a
makeshift hat of plastic tropical fruit, he moved sinuously to the music. He
eventually became recorded into an anthropologist’s notebook as “Willem,
Vamp of Melolo.”4 At the annual regional talent show, Willem stood on stage
clad in a self-styled gown of locally woven, simulated “gold lamé ” commissioned from a village woman. Wearing a bouffant wig, he lip-synched “Baby
Love” with emotional ﬂourish to a rapt audience and won his category of the
event. Part of a society that included bancis, making use of traditional weaving skill, and ﬁnally producing a transgendered rendition of a global pop icon
and coming out a winner, Willem had managed to follow social customs and
proclaim a lifestyle.
A NEW ORDER AND BEYOND
Taman Mini Indonesia (Beautiful Indonesia) represented a nationalistic park to inspire visitors to imagine Indonesia as a nation. It rendered the
New Order slogan, “Unity in Diversity” into theme park form and enabled
the Suhartos to survey their domain—if only in simulation. However, that
was the point. Here social and environmental realities could not enter into a
mythical Indonesian “Disneyland” (which had inspired its creation). Beautiful Indonesia recreated the archipelago and bestowed a monumental “gift”
upon Indonesians, demonstrating government largesse. The park contained
well-produced replicas of traditional houses of ethnic groups representing
each province of the archipelago. They sat frozen in a reconstructed context
that “erased the difference between past, present, and future, and thus ﬂattened time—and, with it, histories, including the extraordinary violence of
the New Order’s own origins—into a continuously presented present.”5
Taman Mini Indonesia installed a permanent appearance of order, by
displaying a community of customary dwellings of cultures across the archipelago and rendering it idyllic. Fundamentally, the park made a statement
about how rulers in Jakarta regarded their islands’ peoples, by arbitrarily

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213

reconstructing Indonesia as it never was and never would be—as a single
place bounded by Javanese authority and design. Often even educated
Javanese were notoriously ignorant of their country’s geography and indifferent to its diverse cultures. Notions of cultural superiority blinded many
Javanese in power to the validity of others in their nation. In current times,
the center of national power (ideally) will need to acknowledge respectfully
its multiple societies, while demonstrating competence and true potency of
leadership. Yet Indonesia has fallen into a dangerous disunity, no longer even
artiﬁcially depictive by a theme park. In the vacuum of Megawati’s free-forall presidency, in response to the corruption and excesses of crony-capitalism
(including multi-national interests), and following the slow pace of reforms:
There is growing concern that commercial interests are dominating the media, and
that they are no longer voicing “the conscience of the people” as their banners often
proclaim. Conspicuous consumption is displayed in all urban centers, while the poor
multitudes are still standing in line for rice rations. Elaborate billion-rupiah cemeteries are being built, while millions of the living have no proper shelter.6

Such realities have fueled Islamic Fundamentalism in Indonesia, and
incited violence from organized terrorist groups and street gangs. This has
created and exacerbated animosities between religious groups, resulting in
incidents like the murder of young schoolgirls walking home in Sulawesi.
Amid such horrors, social customs and lifestyle close their doors in fear.
Still, a new generation in Indonesia enjoys access to information and freedom to express ideas as never before. The Internet opened a far-reaching
dialogue with others (including between terrorist groups), though computers
are not the privilege of poor. Young Indonesians everywhere now imagine
themselves as different from their former leaders and seek new directions for
their country. These may not be the ways of Western democracy, but following other values and goals. Further, Indonesia’s many islands and great
ethnic diversity will complicate its direction through differing cultures and
priorities. The nation’s future remains unpredictable.
Currently the ﬁrst directly elected president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono,
still holds power and some slow changes have begun to take root, beginning government reforms supported by many Indonesians. Yet, the
nation’s international debts weigh heavily and self-interested Indonesian and
international bureaucrats burden institutions. Further, the recent series of
volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and tsunamis have devastated communities
and left people newly disenchanted with their government. The country badly
needs a strong reformist policy drawing together many factions in Indonesia,
in the interest of better living conditions, good governance, social balance,
and order. This will require that foreign and national elites transcend their

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own narrow interests and permit ordinary Indonesians to thrive in their
cultures, customs, and futures.
On August 15, 1902, Raden Kartini wrote from Java in a letter to a Dutch
friend:
I can tell you much of our gentle people; you must learn to know and love them as I
do. There are so many poets and artists among them, and where a people has a feeling
for poetry, the most beautiful thing in life, they cannot be lacking in the instincts of
civilization.7

Glossary
Aceh. Northernmost region of Sumatra devastated by the tsunami of December 2004. Likely
an original landing point for Indian and Arabic Muslim traders. Marco Polo traveled to
Aceh in 1292, recording the ﬁrst Islamic sultanate in Southeast Asia.
Adat. Customary laws and practices throughout Indonesia. The ancient, correct way of doing
things.
Agama. Religion.
Amuk. To rage wildly. To run berserk and violently lash out in all directions. Often follows a
personal problem or insult. Usually an afﬂiction of men.
Asli. Indigenous, with local precedence.
Asmat. Indigenous Papuan people of southern coastal Irian Jaya, or West Papua. Makers of
fantastic ceremonial costumes. Traditionally animist hunter-gatherers.
Austronesians. A group migrating from southern China through islands of Indonesia (around
3000 B.C.), west to the island of Madagascar (Africa), and east as far as Hawaii and Easter
Island. Little is known of them, except through some metal artifacts and the language they
spread. The Austonesian language group is the largest in the world.
Bagus. Beautiful, good, or exemplary. Applied to objects and people.
Balé or Balai. Outdoor pavilion for guests.
Bali. Island between Java and Lombok. The only predominantly Hindu island in Indonesia.
Banci. Transvestite or homosexual male.
Bapak. Polite term of address for married or older man. It means both Mr. and father,
depending on context. Often shortened to “Pak.”
Barong. Fabulous Balinese mythical creature in costumed performances. The barong resembles
a giant caterpillar, a lion, and Chinese festival god combined.
Batak. People of northern Sumatra (of seven sub-groups). Known for impressive, elegantly
carved traditional houses, called rumah gorga (carved house) as well as traditionally ﬁne
carved pieces.

216

GLOSSARY

Batik. Wax-resist dye process in which wax is applied to fabric in patterns. When dyed, the
waxed sections cannot absorb color. An ancient, reﬁned art of Java still thriving today.
Bedhaya. Sacred heirloom female dance performed in courts in Central Java, using elegant
sashes to accentuate slow, graceful, precise movements.
Borobudur. Largest Buddhist monument in Indonesia and the world. An immensely complex, mandala-like open-air temple built between about 760–833 A.D. under the Central
Java Sailendra dynasty.
Bride price. Goods given to a bride’s family by a groom’s family to secure a marriage.
Customary practice involving livestock and gold items.
Bugis. Islamic ethnic group of southern central Sulawesi. Boatbuilding, seafaring, and often
settling on coasts of other islands.
Candi. Temple in Bali or Java.
Dalang. Wayang kulit puppet master enacting all the voices for up to 100 characters and
skillfully manipulating the shadow puppets.
Dangdut. A popular musical fusion incorporating Indian, Malaysian, and Arabic rhythms.
Song lyrics are melancholic but rhythms are lively, syncopated, and invite dancing. Popular
among Islamic youth and others.
Dapur. Kitchen area of a household, often a separate structure behind a main house.
Dayak. Indigenous, non-Islamic, inland people of Kalimantan.
Dewi Sri. The rice goddess in Bali and Java. A high-ranking deity to which many make
offerings.
Dharma. Religious duty following Hinduism and Buddhism.
Dharma Wanita. On obligatory association for wives of civil servants under Suharto’s New
Order, encouraging women to remain subservient housewives and supporters of the nation.
Dukun. Indigenous healer or shaman.
Ekadasa Rudra. Spectacular ritual held every hundred years at Bali’s most sacred temple,
Besakih, in order to purify the world and balance evil forces.
Enak. Pleasurable. Describes good food, pleasant sensations, and enjoyable times.
Gaib. Magic, of which gaib hitam (black magic) is most feared. Gaib hijau (green magic) is
love magic to seduce another. Some men practice gaib perempuan (woman magic) to make
them irresistible to women.
Gamelan. Javanese or Balinese orchestra of mainly gongs and xylophone-like instruments.
Gotong-royong. Community mutual cooperation common to Indonesian societies.
Gunung. Mountain.
Haj. Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.
Halus. Reﬁned, sensitive, and graceful. Halus is an Indonesian ideal applied to speech,
behavior, dance, arts, and so on. It opposes kasar, meaning crude or rude.
Hikayat. A chronicle in Malay language written in Arabic script.
Hudoq. Dramatic mask dance to contact spirits by certain Dayak groups in Kalimantan.
Ibu. Polite term of address for older or married women. It means both “mother” and “Mrs.”
Sometimes shortened to Bu.

GLOSSARY

217

Idul Fitri. A time of celebration and feasting after the end of the Muslim fasting month of
Ramadan.
Ikat. The word means “to bind.” Like batik, a resist dye technique, except that bundles of
yarns to form a cloth are wrapped in tight palm leaf strips and immersed through successive
submersions in dye before a textile is actually woven. Ikat typiﬁes eastern Indonesian fabrics.
Irian Jaya or West Papua. The western half of the island of Papua (New Guinea), ceded to
Indonesia by Dutch in 1963. An area of ongoing independence movements. Indonesia’s
easternmost region.
Jago. Rooster, playboy, a man successful with women. Also an independent male
entrepreneur.
Jamu. Indigenous herbal tonic for many ailments. Men drink jamu to increase their virility.
Java. Fourth largest island in Indonesia and most densely populated, containing almost half of
Indonesia’s population of roughly 240 million people.
Jelek. Ugly or evil.
Jilbab. A Muslim head cloth for women that exposes the face but covers the hair, ears, and
neck.
Joget. Undulating, graceful, rhythmic dancing often performed to dangdut music. Popular
contemporary dance form of the young in Indonesia.
Kain. A generic word for cloth, but in Bali and Java signifying a long stretch of cloth wrapped
around the body to form an ankle length skirt fastened at the waist. Often such kain is
made of batik cotton or silk.
Kaki lima. A wheeled pushcart selling diverse foods along the lanes of towns and cities. Kaki
lima means “ﬁve legs,” referring to wheels, vendor legs and stick. Kaki lima vendors typically
sound bells, gongs, metal wires, stick beats, or vocally chant to indicate what they sell.
Kalimantan. Indonesia’s largest island, formerly called Borneo. Northern sections of the
island belong to Malaysia. Home of the Dayak and the Iban people.
Karma. Hindu and Buddhist belief that one’s deeds ultimately determine one’s fate.
Kecap manis. Important Indonesian seasoning, like molasses. The English word “ketchup”
came from this Indonesian term.
Keris or Kris. A graceful dagger with a wavy double blade. Said to contain the power of a
ruler.
Korupsi. Corruption, especially on the part of the government and wealthy cronies, reaching
great heights during the New Order.
Kurang ajar. Ignorant, without learning. The ultimate insult in Indonesia.
Ladang. Dry rice agriculture still practiced in upland or dry regions of Indonesia, such as
Sumba and Timor. Fields rely upon rain and not irrigation.
Latah. A nervous condition that affects women after a sudden shock. They then become
irrational and behave or speak in sexually explicit and inappropriate ways. Often a local
healer or shaman (dukun) will help relieve the condition.
Lesbi or Tom Boi. Lesbian. Probably relatively accepted in much of Indonesia in times past,
but recently part of public consciousness as lesbians became more visible, especially in
urban cultural communities.

218

GLOSSARY

Lontar Palm. An adaptable species of palm (Borassus sundaicus) producing paper, sugar,
syrup, building materials, and sustenance. Lontar leaves provided paper for ancient
Indonesian texts.
Mahabarata (Mahabharata in India). A long Hindu epic of a war between the Pandawa
brothers and their cousins, the Korawas. Indonesians adapted this Indian story into their
own. Enacted in dances, plays, and puppet performances. Also popular as soap opera and
ﬁlm themes.
Majapahit. A great kingdom of East Java from about 1294 to 1478, sending envoys to eastern
Indonesia and claiming sovereignty over much of what is today the nation. Eventually
taken over by the Islamic empire of Mataram (from Central and North Java), many say that
the courts of Majapahit ﬂed to Bali, greatly inﬂuencing its culture.
Makasar. Islamic ethic group of southwestern Sulawesi. Rivals of the Bugis in seafaring.
Maluku (formerly Moluccas). Eastern province of Indonesia including the islands of Ambon,
Seram, Halmahera, Ternate, Tanimbar, Banda, and others. Region of the “Spice Islands.”
Marapu. Persistent belief system of people of Sumba, making the island an animist holdout
compared to neighboring Christianized islands of Flores, Savu, and Timor and the largely
Muslim island of Sumbawa.
Maulud. The Prophet Muhammad’s birthday, celebrated in Java by parades carrying immense
mountains of decorated rice.
Megalith. Large, chiseled stone monument, often a grave marker.
Meru. Pagoda-like roof (often tiered) on Balinese altars or temples. Symbol of Mt. Meru, the
sacred center of Hindu cosmology.
Mesjid. Mosque.
Mie. Noodles, often stir-fried in a wok as mie goreng (fried noodles) or used in soups.
Minangkabau. A Muslim yet steadfast matrilineal descent group of western Sumatra. Their
traditional clan homes (rumah gadang) are among the most impressive and elegant in
Indonesia, with arching rooﬂines suggesting water buffalo horns.
Musim lapar. The hungry season. This especially applies to the southeastern islands, where
rain might not fall for half the year.
Musyawarah. Community meeting where people try to reach consensus on an issue.
Nasi. Cooked rice, the staple of Indonesia.
Nyentrik. Eccentric person; Orang nyentrik.
Odalan. Festival celebrating the anniversary of a Balinese temple.
Omong. Casual conversation, chatting.
Orang. Person. Indonesian language often makes no distinction denoting gender, including
pronouns. The term for man is “laki-laki” and for women “perempuan,” used to differentiate
sexes.
Orang laut. Sea people, often Bugis originating in Sulawesi or Bajau from the Sulu Archipelago,
but including other island peoples.
Orang tuna rumah. Homeless person, street person.
Orde Baru. New Order Indonesia, under President Suharto after the downfall of Sukarno.
Pacar. Either a boyfriend or a girlfriend.

GLOSSARY

219

Pancasila. Five basic principles of the Republic of Indonesia: Belief in one God; just and
civilized social order; unity of Indonesia; guided democracy through the wisdom of representative resolutions; and social justice for all.
Pasar. Public market containing many vendors.
Pasola. Spectacular annual horse jousting and spearing contest in West Sumba, celebrating the
arrival of sea worms (nyale) boding success of the rice harvest.
Perahu. A general term for boat, which might be of many types.
Pinisi. Cargo boat of the Bugis seafaring people of South Sulawesi. Extremely well crafted of
teak or ironwood and up to 70 feet in length.
Priyayi. The historically elite class of Java.
Puasa. The Indonesian term for the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
Pura. Balinese temple.
Qur’an (Koran). Book containing the word of God as told to the prophet Muhammad. The
ultimate divine authority for Muslims.
Raja. King.
Ramai. Lively, bustling, spirited, crowded. Indonesians enjoy events and places that are ramai.
The opposite is kurang ramai, meaning dull, lifeless, or lacking spirit.
Ramayana. The Indian epic of King Rama and the abduction of his wife Sita by the evil
Rawana. The subject of many dances, plays, shadow puppet performances and television
dramas.
Randai. Traditional narrative circular dance performance of Minangkabau men, incorporating martial arts called pencak silat, acting, storytelling, and a musical ensemble.
Rangda. A hideous witch in Balinese masked dance drama always defeated by the barong.
Rantau. A journey by men away from their homelands to gain knowledge, experience, and
wealth. A long custom in western Sumatra and carried out in other parts of Indonesia.
Rapi. Neatly dressed, also implying a modern sleekness.
Rasa. Can mean feeling, taste of food, sensation, or expressing one’s thoughts about a matter.
Rumah. Basic term for house applied to other structures, such as rumah makan (“eating
house”) for a restaurant.
Rumah adat. Traditional clan house where ritual events take place. These display the most
impressive architecture of a regional group.
Run. Small island among the Banda Islands in eastern Indonesia traded by the English to
the Dutch in exchange for Manhattan Island in the mid-seventeenth century. One of the
“Spice Islands” where nutmeg ﬂourished.
Rupiah. Indonesia’s currency.
Sambal. Indonesian hot sauce, made in many ways.
Sarung. A basic garment for men and women across Indonesia. A cloth sewn together at each
end forming a tube people step into and pull up to the waist, then fasten in a variety of
styles.
Sastra. Literature in a ﬁne sense.
Saté. Meat coated with spicy peanut sauce and cooked on skewers over open grills. A popular
street food.

220

GLOSSARY

Sawah. Wet rice agriculture.
Semangat. Spiritual force within many things. People and houses should contain semangat.
Senang. To enjoy or like. To feel happy. If especially relaxed and enjoying oneself with others,
this may be expressed as senang-senang.
Seni rupa. Visual arts: painting, drawing, carving, sculpture and so on.
Sepak takraw. An ancient game of kicking a hollow woven rattan ball to keep it in the air, still
popular in Indonesia. Something like “hacky sack” played in the United States.
Sharia. Conservative Islamic law.
Sholat or Solat. Muslim prayers performed ﬁve times daily.
Sirih-pinang. Betel nut (pinang) from the areca palm and a catkin (sirih) from the piper plant,
chewed in combination with powdered lime (kapur). Sometimes a piper leaf wraps all
ingredients. A mild narcotic of central social importance in Indonesia.
Slametan or Selamatan. Ritual held in Java on occasions such as marriage, birth, death,
appeasing village spirits, illness, or the seventh month of pregnancy. This includes relatives
and often neighbors in a communal feast.
Spice Islands. Eastern islands of the Maluku archipelago originally drawing Europeans to
Indonesia in the early sixteenth century in search of spices: especially nutmeg and cloves
that many believed prevented the plague. These islands included Ternate, Tidore, Makian,
Halmahera, Seram, Ambon, and the Banda Islands.
Srivijaya. A great trading Buddhist empire of Sumatra between the eighth and fourteenth
centuries, controlling maritime commerce through the Straits of Melaka.
Subak. An organization of rice farmers in Bali who work the land and maintain the irrigation
system.
Suharto. President of Indonesia from 1965 to 1998, a period called New Order Indonesia.
Sukarno. The ﬁrst president of Indonesia (after the end of World War II) and long a part of
the struggle for independence from Holland.
Sulawesi. Third largest island of Indonesia. Home of the Muslim Bugis and Makasar, and the
Toraja people, among others.
Sultan. Muslim king.
Sumatra. Indonesia’s westernmost and second largest island. Home to the Minangkabau and
Batak, among others.
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Current President of Indonesia—the ﬁrst elected by direct vote
in September, 2004. Usually called “S.B.Y.” by Indonesians.
Tahu. Tofu. Basic protein food made from fermented soybeans.
Taman Mini Indonesia. “Beautiful Indonesia in Miniature.” A nationalistic theme park in
Jakarta commissioned by Mrs. Suharto after a trip to Disneyland.
Tempeh. A fermented, compressed soybean food from Java. Referred to as “poor people’s
meat,” tempeh is actually much higher in protein.
Tikar. A plaited mat of grass or palm leaves used in much of Indonesia to sit upon, for meals,
and entertaining guests.
Topeng. Carved masks, usually of wood. Topeng dance dramas are numerous on Bali and Java
representing hundreds of characters.

GLOSSARY

221

Toraja. A group in the mountains of central South Sulawesi, practicing the indigenous belief
system, Aluk to dolo, “ways of the ancestors” combined with Christianity. Toraja build
spectacular, carved, arched-roofed clan homes called tongkonan.
Transmigrasi. A policy deployed by President Suharto’s government to transmigrate people
away from densely populated Java onto other less populated islands, where they would
continue to carry on wet rice agriculture.
Uma. Term for house in many eastern Indonesian areas.
V.O.C. Vereenigde Oost Indische Compagnie or Dutch East Indies Company.
Wallace Line. Imaginary geographical boundary running north and south between Bali and
Lombok separating two distinct climate zones of Indonesia, with differing types of ﬂora
and fauna.
Warung. Indonesia’s predominant public eating establishment, serving a range of fast or
ready-made dishes. Stir-fries and curries are popular. Warungs range from a simple table
with a communal bench to places with separate tables, music, and more varied fare.
Wayang kulit. Flat, leather shadow puppets used in performances especially popular in Java
and Bali.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JILL FORSHEE is a cultural anthropologist and Visiting Scholar at the Center for Southeast Asia Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Author of
Between the Folds: Stories of Cloth, Lives, and Travels from Sumba (2000), she
has written numerous articles about Indonesia.